Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby
Distributor: Paramount Pictures Australia
Runtime: 163 mins. Reviewed in Jul 2023
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan

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Rating notes: Action violence.

This American film returns Ethan Hunt and his spy team to the cinema screen. The task is to track down a dangerous weapon that threatens all humanity if it falls into the wrong hands.

This American film returns Ethan Hunt and his spy team to the cinema screen. The task is to track down a dangerous weapon that threatens all humanity if it falls into the wrong hands.

This is the first of a two-part, seventh instalment in the Mission Impossible film series. The film is co-written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie and follows Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018). The film was shot in several European countries, as well as the United Arab Emirates. It catapults Ethan Hunt (Cruise), at age 60, into constant action and intrigue.

In Prague behind the old Iron Curtain, Hunt engaged in mission activity that failed, and he is blamed. Ethan’s personal mission is to locate the agency, or the person, who was responsible, and he needs to clear his name. The film is full of double crosses, unfulfilled vengeance, betrayal, manufactured identities, fear-inducing Artificial Intelligence, and dark pasts needing to be relived.

Hunt’s IMF (The Impossible Mission Force) includes ace computer technician and Hunt’s best friend, Luther Stickell (Rhames); ex-MI 6 agent, Ilsa Faust (Ferguson); and IMF technical field agent, Benji Dunn (Pegg).

Kirby returns as black-market arms dealer, The White Widow. The IMF is the US’ chief espionage agency, and Ethan and his IMF team are trying to track down a terrifying weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. The plot revolves around trying to locate a key to open a lock that will enable world domination. Everyone wants it, including the IMF, CIA, and British intelligence. Esai Morales plays Gabriel, Hunt’s powerful terrorist adversary, and the film’s chief villain. Christopher McQuarrie directed and wrote both this film and the next episode, Part 2, to be released in 2024. Several cast members (for example, Pegg and Kirby) have participated in previous Mission films.

This is the longest yet of films in the Mission Impossible series, and is one of the most action packed movies Cruise has attempted as Ethan Hunt. Part Two will be the final one for Cruise. This film has some incredible action stunts, including a motor bike jump over a high cliff to connect with a speeding train, travelling far down below. The bike jump stunt matches the action stunts that were featured in his 2018 movie, and the cliff-jumping and train wreck scenes eclipse the adrenaline pumping scenarios that reliably characterise James Bond movies.

The tension created by Cruise’s stunts which permeate the movie are dramatic, reminding one of the power of the Jesuit priest, tied to a Cross, which carried him over South America’s Iguazu Falls in Roland Jofee’s The Mission (1986) ­– that scene marked The Mission as extraordinary.

This movie’s plot is opaque, but the film’s suspense stays intact. With this movie, it doesn’t matter a great deal about plot complexity, or details of the things that threaten the future of the global world, or the evil of the chief villain, Gabriel, when the worst evil is no longer human. It is the live stunt work of Cruise that sets the film above other movies like it.