Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

For its first five instalments, Mission: Impossible was a series defined by constant reinvention. Each film designed to behave as a blockbuster calling card for the high profile directors that actor-producer Tom Cruise had managed to flatter then recruit. These constantly transforming artistic objectives have meant that re-evaluation has rarely crept into proceedings. That is until Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. This film - director Christopher McQuarrie's third with a fourth hot on its heels - is riddled with allusions to Brian De Palma's originator, even terminating with another action sequence set upon a speeding train. These references go beyond seeing Cruise's Ethan Hunt back sporting a black v-neck jumper under a leather jacket, or bringing back Henry Czerny's IMF irritant Kittridge. The aesthetics of late twentieth century spycraft - windowless rooms stacked with CRT monitors running diagnostics - have logistical and mechanical purchase in a story that revolves around an all-powerful algorithm; one that has escaped clean room conditions to infect every input or interaction aimed at Hunt's crew. The digital sphere can no longer be trusted. Only analogue solutions can be relied upon. 

Dead Reckoning revolves around a phantom antagonist taking orders from a constellation of calculations; endlessly breeding blue thoughts that are suspended and swirling in a pitch black void that (literally) hangs over the film's sweating heroes. This sense of danger is so obviously all-encompassing that very little energy is expended tying the film's disparate set-pieces together. There's a sense that this issue cannot be settled - and indeed it is not in this episode - therefore the film is given over to describing solutions to ever-changing problems. This mode of storytelling is actually complimented by the strange frequencies inherent to Cruise: his take on Hunt is monastic and obsessive, a fanatic dedicated not to a country or cause but to the experts he has selected to be in the room with him. This drive takes on a metatextual quality in Dead Reckoning, a film that pivots on the relentless foregrounding of enormous and impeccable stunt work. This execution focused mindset means that Dead Reckoning reads like a thesis statement on filmmaking itself. Hunt and his earpiece support are a creative team, one constantly placed in situations where they have to play the cards dealt to them on the day then figure out an advantageous outcome. 

For a star as private and protected as Cruise, this framing seems positively autobiographical. Like Hunt, Cruise is the human bullet chambered by these enormous productions; prepped, against everybody's better judgement, to be the one blasted out into the abyss. He's an old-fashioned star in that sense, everything is balanced on his shoulders and his ability to hit his marks. Therefore he is charged to behave in a certain way. Dead Reckoning offers up a sanitised and mythologised appraisal of a human being suffering through these pressures: Hunt frequently talks his less experienced allies through hell with the tranquil detachment of the truly invincible. If there's a sour note in this restless film then, it's the ease with which Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa Faust is replaced. It's not just that early glimpses of the actress feel digitally stitched in, it's that Hayley Atwell's pickpocket Grace instantly stakes such a strong physical claim on both Hunt and the moment-to-moment assembly of the film. While Faust is slowly becoming an afterthought, Grace is intertwined with Hunt, co-driving his car (another FIAT 500, Dead Reckoning presumably as much a fan of The Castle of Cagliostro as the comparatively antiseptic Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) and pulling the kind of screen filling startled-but-still-photogenic faces ill-suited to either Ferguson or Cruise's characters. 

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

While the rest of the 80s relics struggle with box office obsolescence, Tom Cruise goes from strength to strength. His formula? Rather than hoard the limelight in pursuit of past, pumped-up glories, producer-star Cruise is happy to share the big screen with supernaturally accomplished women, cutting them in on the deal at a conceptual rather than superficial level. Edge of Tomorrow (or Live Die Repeat if you came to the film on home video) charted the rise of Cruise's William Cage from PR ooze to someone Emily Blunt's super soldier Rita Vrataski was happy to co-operate with. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation replays the trick with Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa Faust, a shadow struck from the Red Grant mould who demonstrates the same capricious, see-sawing interests.

Hunt's fascination with the obviously duplicitous Faust reveals the kind of growth you'd expect in a comfortable, ageing super-spy. At this stage in his life Hunt knows his way around a deception. He's is no longer the delusional worrywart who willed Claire Phelps' betrayal away, he's established and confident enough now to contextualise Faust's treacherous streak as, essentially, flirting. After all, she hasn't killed him yet. Beyond an obvious, fizzy, professional respect, Hunt clearly sympathises with the precariousness of Faust's assignment. Like his 96 self, she's gifted but inexperienced, moving amongst sharks at the behest of a paternal overlord that explicitly treats her as expendable.

Cruise's insistence on keeping Hunt monastic, even asexual, post-Mission: Impossible III lends the relationship an interesting tension too. It's nothing so simple as a desire to possess, Hunt seems to see himself in Faust. She's a prospect. Perhaps he'd rather shape the rival agent into an ally than outright dismiss her as a threat? Kill off the bad fathers competing for Faust's soul then reconfigure her into a replacement for the ageing IMF agent. Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie's weaves this conceit into the bones of Rogue Nation, tracking Faust throughout as a co-star. She's always a distinct, dangerous presence with murky, even malleable, purpose. Sometimes she needs to be Hunt's ally. Sometimes she doesn't. Unlike the jealous, threatened Jim Phelps of Mission: Impossible Hunt isn't scared of obsolescence, he's excited by the possibility of a continuity beyond himself. Tested by age, Hunt defeats his mentor yet again by refusing to sink into the same, limited patterns of self-pity.