★★★★☆
The beginning:
The newest installment to the franchise seems to hit every trending topic of 2023: AI, misinformation, and even a submarine. And Tom Cruise, despite the wrinkles around his eyes that get accentuated by his handsome smile, is going full steam ahead, keeping the audience at the edge of their seats during the grandiose set pieces.
The first half of the movie:
The first half of the movie is everything that makes this franchise the highest-rated one of all time. Cleverly written, fast-paced, and action-packed. The airport set piece, in particular: It more than immerses the audience; we become the action.
As numerous threats and hindrances surface on Benji and Luther’s laptop screens, we are pushed to the brink of the limits of our short-term memory, just as Tom Cruise is experiencing the overload. One would have to give Christopher McQuarrie the credit he deserves for being able to flush out characters and expositions and move the plot forward in an overwhelming but retainable way. We constantly feel the imminent threat of artificial intelligence – or ‘The Entity’, as the character calls it – combined with the CIA, pressing in from every direction and piling onto the IMF team. But, never once do we lose the thread of the narrative, although we feel as if we are about to at a sensory level. McQuarrie does a fantastic job of walking the line and striking that balance of complexity and enjoyment.
The second half of the movie:
The same praise cannot be given once we pass the midway runtime. As the movie progresses through Venice, the story loses sight of the cleverness (think the hospital reveal/twist from Fallout) that makes this franchise so special for me.
As Manohla Dargis puts it in her New York Times review: “Cruise has once again cranked the superspy dial up to 11”. The problem is the super spy part. There were too many actions and not enough “brain.” As Tom Cruise wonderfully leaps off an Innsbruck cliff on a motorcycle, he leaves behind Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames’s characters. As demonstrated in the franchise, when these three work together, defusing a nuclear bomb in the last film or defusing a fake nuclear bomb in this one, the stakes and action rise much higher.
The film also loses its grip on the novel concept of artificial intelligence’s ability to erase truth in real time. When the film first showcased the warehouse of CIA agents transcribing everything into handwritten documents, I was ready for an expansive storyline where the filmmakers play with audience superiority to place us right in the middle of misinformation and clever twists. Unfortunately, though, the film missed out on using this setting to navigate the intelligence world intelligently.
The last thing that bothered me was the cinematography. Fraser Taggart, while brilliant, is no match for Rob Hardy B.S.C., who created a masterful, clinical, muted colour palette and texture that was the perfect match for a spy movie. The fine halation in the highlights; the smooth and warm colour of the storming sky during the HALO jump from Fallout that was achieved through the use of 35mm Kodak film was nowhere to be found in Dead Reckoning. Instead, the cinematography seems to get too wrapped up in the actions, sometimes deviating from its focus.
The end:
Of course, many of the aforementioned nitpicks are not really an issue but rather more of a result of incompleteness. All the performances are great, Hayley Atwell had incredible on-screen chemistry with Cruise. But the characters don’t feel fully fleshed out. Esai Morales’s Gabriel feels more like a nod to the franchise’s past movies than a villain we can fear. But all this comes back to the fact that this is one half of a movie. I am not sure if I like the Harry Potter syndrome of splitting the finale into two parts that seem to be picking up steam in Hollywood (Avengers Endgame, Dune, Spider-verse).
But in any case, like Tom Cruise and, topically, Christopher Nolan has repetitively hammered in, some films are meant to be seen in theatres. And just like Top Gun: Maverick, Dead Reckoning is a film that Tom Cruise has poured heart and soul into. Shot during COVID, a simple read-through of the IMDb Trivia page tells you the usual shebang: Cruise personally paying for a cruise for the actors to quarantine on; Cruise taking his stunt to a new height.
Yet, none of that can cover the fact that Tom Cruise is, perhaps, one of the last Hollywood superstars working in the industry today. And I can’t wait to pay up for a ticket to Part Two.
By: Ray Wu
The Blue and White 