MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7 spoiler review

Ethan Hunt's latest adventure is the weakest of a still-entertaining run.

Let’s get this straight right away: You should see Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning: Part One. You should see it on a big screen in a loud theater. As with the other films in this franchise, especially the ones beginning with Ghost Protocol, it’s miles above most other blockbusters, continuing to deliver a reliable mix of thrills and action. 

But for the first time since Chris McQuarrie stepped into the director’s chair, the mission is beginning to feel compromised. We’re not quite in self-destruct mode yet – and, like pizza or sex, a disappointing Mission: Impossible is better than none at all – but this is the first entry in a long time to feel like the story is being sacrificed for bombast and franchise management. 

The problems are evident right from the cold open. Rather than catching up with Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team in the middle of a mission, the first scene focuses on Russian soldiers in a submarine, suddenly subjected to the whims of an artificial intelligence gone rogue. After nearly 30 years, the template of a Mission: Impossible movie is fairly well set – we open with Ethan Hunt and his crew on a mission that might only be tangibly related to the rest of the plot. It launches us with a dose of adrenaline, ready to be dazzled. 

Now, there’s nothing wrong, per se, with the submarine sequence in and of itself. In fact, it made me realize I miss a good, claustrophobic submarine scene. But the problem is that Ethan Hunt and his team are going to spend the next two hours searching for a mysterious key that unlocks something that remains a mystery to them, and I assume they’ll continue that search into the next film. Why put the audience once step ahead of the IMF team, when a large part of this series’ joy comes from keeping us in suspense and letting Ethan and his team surprise us? 

It seems like a small complaint and, like I said, Dead Reckoning is still a ton of fun. But the magic trick of McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible movies has often been that they delight us with spectacle while keeping their plots tight and focused. But whether its McQuarrie’s penchant for starting his scripts with set pieces and filling in the story gaps later or the constant delays that came from shooting during the COVID-19 pandemic, the film feels disjointed, overstuffed and unfocused in a way the other recent films have not. 

The first hour is the biggest offender. All before the credits, the film has to establish the scene on the sub; the existence of a cruciform key that serves as this film’s McGuffin; and the whereabouts of Isla Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who we seemingly see killed in a sand-swept raid. Even then, we still have a (very cool) sequence where Ethan breaks into a covert CIA facility, gasses an entire room of people and confronts handler Kittrich (Henry Czerny, returning from the first film). Once the credits are done, we still have to catch back up with Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames), who help Ethan infiltrate an airport, where he bumps into a thief named Grace (Haley Atwell), who absconds with the key. 

It’s just too much, and the pacing comes in fits and starts. Where the other Mission: Impossible movies started at a breakneck pace and continued headlong through their runtime, Dead Reckoning moves a bit slower, and focuses more on the spycraft than immediate previous installments. Again, that’s not necessarily a complaint. The airport sequence – in which both our heroes and AI are pit against each other in tracking their marks – is tense and fun, filled with the kind of “what could go wrong now” humor on which these films thrive. But the exposition is creaky and unfocused and, again, the film devotes a great deal of real estate to Ethan and his team asking  “what does this key open” when we already know. 

Once the adventure gets going, the action’s a lot of fun. There’s a chase in Rome that could feel extremely redundant after similar sequences in John Wick, Fast X and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, all of which feature fast-paced pursuits in foreign locales, sometimes in a tiny car. But Dead Reckoning gains a good deal of mileage and goodwill from the closeups that prove Cruise and Atwell were in the cars, as well as the humorous wrinkle that the two are handcuffed together. It’s funny and exciting, and ends up being the best of these such sequences this year. The film’s final 40 minutes include a runaway train, an exploding bridge, a motorcycle and a parachute that combine in ways I wouldn’t dream of spoiling, even in this spoiler-laden review. The film’s marketing has built up Cruise’s motorcycle jump for most the year, to a point where it’s almost disappointing that we know it’s coming. But it’s followed by such an inventive, constantly building climax that it’s forgivable. That’s the joy of these films; they constantly add to the spectacle and danger in a way that, in its best moments, elicits as many laughs as gasps. 

In many ways, this film is a victory lap for Cruise after dominating the box office with last year’s Top Gun: Maverick. And, as usual, he’s good. His performance builds on our knowledge of Ethan Hunt as a guy who will protect others’ lives at all costs, even to his own safety. He’s a straight arrow in a cinematic landscape where we tend to cheer on antiheroes, but Cruise gives Ethan just enough frustrated, scared reaction shots to keep him from feeling like a cartoon, and the actor’s gravitas is such that when he says he will protect his team at all costs, we believe him. It’s been nearly 30 years since Cruise started playing Ethan Hunt, and I appreciate that the character’s selflessness has been a constant since that time. I also like that this film brings out the slight of hand Ethan showed off in the first film. 

More than any other recent Mission: Impossible, Dead Reckoning tosses in new characters left and right. Atwell, as Grace, is the most integral new character and, judging by her arc in this film, will continue to play a role alongside Ethan and his team. The actress has been the high point in Captain America: The First Avenger and TV’s Agent Carter, and while I think the character of Grace is a bit too cliché and underwritten to have the impact of, say, Ferguson’s Faust, it’s fun to watch Atwell bicker, banter and kick ass alongside the team. Guardians of the Galaxy’s Pom Klementieff is a ton of fun as an assassin way too thrilled to be on the job, and Vanessa Kirby makes a welcome return as the White Widow, whose allegiance is constantly shifting. It’s good to see Czerny’s world-weary Kittrich again, and Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis do what they can with the small roles of frustrated agents tracking Hunt. Esai Morales never quite rises to the threat level of Sean Harris or Henry Cavill from the last two films, but he’s fine as the slimy, morally flexible threat. 

Unfortunately, the overstuffed cast means the more familiar actors are more too often sidelined. Pegg gets a few funny, frustrated rants as Benji, and it’s very funny that 30 years on, Rhames still receives a good paycheck to sit in chairs and give Tom Cruise life lessons. But they feel like guest stars, not integral parts of the story, a shame given how much fun the previous films have had with this ensemble. Most glaringly, Ferguson is given little to do as Ilsa, reduced from being a ferocious spy in her own right to someone who only exists to save or be saved by Ethan. She gets a fun swashbuckling sequence with Morales, but the character’s sudden death is dealt with and moved on from too quickly to really have an impact. Plus, in a series that is famous for killing people and then faking out the audience – and did that with her character earlier in the film – it’s too easy to suspect this won’t stick, especially since we’re once again dealing with a part one here. 

And a word about that. Dead Reckoning is the latest film this summer – after Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Fast X – to be the first of a two part film. Of those, this feels like the most complete experience; there is still another story to be told, but Hunt does achieve an objective that gives a sense of closure. We’ll see if part two hits its projected release date of next summer – I’m guess writer and actors strikes will prohibit that – but at least it won’t gnaw too badly. 

Other than that, there’s not much to say. If you like the Mission: Impossible movies, you’ll probably find a lot to enjoy here. I think it’s the weakest of the McQuarrie ones, but the McQuarrie ones overall are the best of the franchise – and still better than most of the ongoing series Hollywood keeps doling out. If it’s a disappointment at all, it’s a disappointment from a series that still is highly entertaining, and I’ll gladly accept the next mission Cruise and McQuarrie give us.