Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning

This movie started out promising but by the end, it just felt like being robbed of two and a half hours. I am a big fan of the MI movies (including MI2, which people seem to hate) and I could appreciate this movie for the few scenes that it did right, but it treats the audience like idiots in its bland, repetitive storyline (how many times do we need to hear the words "the key" and "the entity"? It was as if the writers of this movie just gave up on their jobs when they wrote this. Easily the weakest MI movie ever filmed. It had me staring at my watch every 20 minutes. As others have mentioned, the character development in this movie is also truly awful. I have barely any interest in seeing Part Two of Dead Reckoning at this point. The high scores this movie is getting absolutely baffle me. This movie by no means deserves a score higher than a 6 or a 6.5.

Woeful script, weak story, shoddy pacing and lengthy exposition reveals how badly COVID hit this production. How the franchise can go from the near perfect cinematic heights of 'Fallout' to this, is so disappointing. Hayley Atwell shines, but even Cruise fails to rescue it. Simon Pegg with no funny lines.. how is that possible? I mean, by action movie standards it's ahead of most, but this isn't any action franchise therefore the disappointment hits hard. I think McQ and Cruise need to rewatch Fallout before they finish up on Part 2. One other thing, having read the bulk of reviews, there are some seriously overrated journalists out there, quite a lot of them by the looks of it. Real cinema fans want rate this one above a 6 or 7, I'd understand if it were lower too.

4 considerations for those with high expectations and who want to avoid severe disappointment:

1 THE NEW ACTORS LACK CHARISMA

I NEED a vicious bad guy, to really pull me into the thrill of the moviie, but none of that! There isnt even one bad guy in particular, because there are now numerous supposedly "bad" guys / girls and they all FAIL to impress me.

Haley Atwell is not my cup of tea either. She unfortunately does get a lot of screentime.

2 IT LASTS TOO LONG

There is WAY too much superfluous (explanatory) talk that really slows down this movie. It lasts WAY too long because of it ( 2hours and 43 minutes). Half an hour could have been easily cut out of it!

I started looking at my watch, halfway through...and I got BORED. There I said it. I say it again, I got blipping bored. That's the last thing I want to experience during an action movie!

3 THE STUNTS DONT LOOK REAL

There is such a heavy layer of ADDED CGI effects, that the REAL stunts actually stop looking real at all. The real stunts look WAY more impressive in the behind the scenes footage, than they do in the actual movie.

4 THE JOKES FALL FLAT

Simon Pegg looks like a really old man now and he somehow has lost his usual wit and charm, which were a delight in the earlier MI movies. Without a witty Simon Pegg, GONE are the jokes as well. I didnt laugh out loud once. I smirked a few times...

This MI movie is definitely one of the worst editions, if not the very worst, because it BORED the heck out of me. THAT has never happened to me before watching a MI movie!

Despite this disappointing conclusion I still wanna thank you for reading my 2001 th review on Imdb.

Remember that classic MI scene where they broke in at CIA, and Cruise was hanging from the ceiling using wires? It's not a huge setpiece, but that scene is a nailbiting example of ingenious problem solving.

In 'Dead Reckoning' there's none of that. Here it's keys changing hands every 10 minutes that is suppose to pass as suspense. And of course the only true selling point: the stunts performed by Tom Cruise.

But I want and expect more than that.

A large part of the film is devoted to people sitting or standing in a room, explaining what the plot is. Endless talking and explaining. We are told in several scenes the same information we just heard. Worst one is Benji, who is merely there to repeat things for someone in the cast, to make sure everyone in the audience knows what is going on. That is sloppy writing. One of the biggest no-no's as a screenwriter is resolving to "so what you are saying is, that..." info sharing. Benji does this all the time. And he is as incompetent as usual. And he is supposed to be a part of a small and unique team that is saving the world? Really?

I hope MI:8 isn't just another Tom Cruise stunt reel where it looks like they make the story up as the go along, as long as all marks are checked in the end (running, face swapping, dealing with heights etc), and where character development takes a backseat. Bigger is not always better. And the action ALWAYS has to serve the story, not the other way around.

All of the instalments in this franchise are very wellmade, highly entertaining, decently fun, and always tries to invent more and better stunts. There is also nothing wrong cinematically, and the directing is excellent. This is definitely worth the money, but I still feel like this is lacking, something is missing, there is no soul in this movie.

Partly I think it is the acting. Not from Tom, and Harley is amazing as everything she does. But the rest feel like they are just there. Partly it is the ending, which I did not like. There is no cherry on top, no cliffhanger. The movie sort of just ends. Another thing that bothers me is that the chase scene and adrenaline inducing events are there to entertain yes, and oh boy do they deliver, but I also feel like that is their only purpose. This is almost like watching Fast&Furious, only less crazy and better acted.

I do highly recommend this movie, and if you liked previous instalment's you will love this one. And the action is insanely good at times. However this movie did not do it for me. Time to end this franchise because clearly the people involved have started to get bored with it, and so have I.

7/10 and a good very entertaining movie, but hollow and soulless. If it wasn't for a couple of action scenes I would not remember a single thing about this movie in a couple of days.