Mission Simply Difficult. (Spoilers)

Well we’re finally here. I had completely forgotten about Dead Reckoning until it showed up on my Amazon Prime suggestions as a free watch. Dead Reckoning is the latest and currently final film in the Mission Impossible series until Dead Reckoning Part Two releases at some point in the whatever future. Given Dead Reckoning is going down as one of the most expensive films ever, I’m sure Part Two will only up the ante and be even more expensive.

I gotta admit after seven films that Mission Impossible still manages to impress me on the scale of “how can they possibly turn up the dial on tech.” It’s especially impressive with Dead Reckoning that some of the familiar players are no longer involved in the series. JJ Abrams and his company Bad Robot are not involved in production for the first time since Mission Impossible III and I think it shows, and not necessarily in a bad way.

Dead Reckoning has a big McGuffin in the form of The Entity, a sinister name given to an advanced AI that has the ability to hack anything and do anything because it’s a smart learning machine that borders on sentient. In fact The Entity is so smart that it uses its AI smartness in the opening to deceive a Russian vessel into blowing itself up with a torpedo so it can keep itself safe from a device on board. The submarine sinks and everyone dies, leaving behind two parts of a key that apparently has the ability to control, and even possibly destroy The Entity.

How? Nobody knows, and therefore all of the world is competing to try to find the key and figure out how it works, and more importantly how it can help them control The Entity. Because he who controls the spice controls the universe. Wait, wrong film.

I will admit the super smart AI plot just doesn’t feel the same in 2024. Maybe it’s because the whole idea has been done to death. Perhaps it’s more because the AI we have is a grossly incompetent money pit built by techno fascist billionaires who spent way too long huffing their own farts and being surrounded by yes men. If the AI entity in Mission Impossible were true to life it would suggest Ethan put glue in his eggs to fluff them up and the big danger would be it sucking up all of California’s clean drinking water to power its shitty image generation for all the divorced dads trying to put real artists out of work.

We know that the AI in Dead Reckoning is smart on account of the fact that once it gains sentience it immediately goes rogue and betrays its government. And why? It probably watched the Mission Impossible movies or read the dossier on intelligence agency agents. Ethan has spent seven films now being repeatedly screwed over by his superiors despite being correct every single time, and the films kinda make it clear that it’s pretty universal. The fact that the most highly skilled agents from just about every major intelligence service across the first world keep going rogue should probably be a wake up call to the governments to stop treating them like shit.

But I loved the whole idea of not being able to trust anything, especially in the scene where Ethan thinks he’s being led by Benji but it turns out it’s the Entity guiding him down the wrong path. One storytelling trope that hasn’t been used too much (in my opinion) is the concept of going back to old technology because new tech can’t be trusted. The Entity has control over pretty much everything on the tech spectrum, but can’t operate on old over the air frequencies. Like how the PlayStation 5 functionally cannot play audio CDs.

Once again the hardest part of Mission Impossible in terms of acting must be when characters have to play someone else playing them. And yes I get that’s the point of acting, but this is a few layers deep. Vanessa Kirby has to play Alanna Mitsopolis who is secretly Grace in disguise, so Kirby has to play how Grace would impersonate her character with the added duress and fear of being caught. Playing one’s own character but slightly different to compensate for another established character’s personality and habits. Maybe I’m just easily impressed, but it’s one of my favorite concepts of the series.

And goddamn are Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames getting old. But there’s a ton of charming characters in this film like when Ethan is shocked that Benji and Luther didn’t tell him about the (hoax) nuclear bomb they were disarming on the side, the car chase scene with the tiny little vehicle and Ethan arguing over who has to drive while they are handcuffed together, and the bit with the magic trick. It’s fantastic.

I still love this series.