tawandamusarurwa
Tinashe Kusema
Film Review
SOME people believe Tom Cruise rescued the “cinema experience” last year with the long-awaited sequel to the “Top Gun” movie franchise — “Maverick”.
While I was not entirely sold on the Paramount Pictures movie, “Top Gun: Maverick” did offer an entertaining alternative in a year largely marked by disappointing blockbusters like “Morbius”, “Black Adam”, “Thor: Love and Thunder” and “Dr Strange: Multiverse of Madness”. If I am to be totally honest, we have kind of reached that time where the “comic book fatigue” is starting to creep in. A few actors seem to have resisted the urge and temptation to sign on to Marvel and DC Comics projects.
Cruise leads that cast of actors and has managed to do well for himself.
The year 2023 has been another disappointment, and, once again, Cruise seems to have come to our rescue.
“Mission Impossible: Death Reckoning Part One” could very well be among the best releases of the year, a sure-fire top five.
It is rumoured to be the beginning of an end of this beloved franchise, with the conclusion of the two-part release and final movie due for release mid-next year.
In typical Cruise style, everything — from the stakes and action to the story and stunts — is amped-up. A new experimental artificial intelligence (AI) supposedly evolves and starts throwing its weight around by hacking some of the most secure intelligence databases in the world.
This catches the attention of all the world’s superpowers and a race to find a secret key that can destroy or control this AI, which has been nicknamed “The Entity”, ensues.
The United States enlists the help of the IMF (not the International Monetary Fund, by the way).
The IMF decides to hire Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team — Benjie (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) — to find the key and how it can be used to control The Entity.
The mission catches Hunt, the Impossible Missions Foundation (IMF)’s most-prized asset, in the midst of a midlife crisis as he reflects on the events and path that led him to join the secret organisation in the first place.
Ghosts from Hunt’s past start showing up, specifically Gabriel (Esai Morales), who had a fateful encounter with our hero before joining the IMF. Gabriel, a powerful terrorist and narcissist hell-bent on seeing the world burn, appears to be working with The Entity as its emissary. Other players who crop out of the woodwork include Alanna Mistopolis (Vanessa Kirby), who is the daughter of an arms dealer from the first movie, and Hunt’s former boss Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny).
The writers — Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendressen — do a very good job of incorporating characters, both old and new.
For every old character like Mistopolis, Gabriel and Kittridge, there is a new one to match, for example, Paris (Pom Klementieff), Grace (Hayley Artwell) and Zola (Fredrick Schmidt). Each character has a role to play in the larger scheme of things, as Grace is the new “Mission Impossible” girl and she presents Hunt with someone to rescue and take care of throughout the movie.
Every hero needs his damsel in distress, right? Zola is mainly there for comic relief and shines brightly. The writers do a seamless job of weaving all these characters and stories together. The film is also your typical “Mission Impossible” movie as the action scenes are crispy and fast-paced. Cruise does a lot of running (literally) and the stunts are out of this world. As we all know, Cruise performs all his stunts and there is always one that is set to be the highlight of the movie.
You will not be disappointed here.
I am one of those people who are sad that we seem to have reached the end of the “Mission Impossible” franchise. However, I am glad that Cruise and his team seem determined to go out on a high.
Online Reporter