Epic length and a top-class cast around part-time stuntman Tom Cruise: These are the cornerstones of Mission: Impossible 7 – Dead Reckoning Part One, the latest installment in his action series. A year after the box-office hit Top Gun: Maverick and five years after its last impossible mission (that was Fallout starring Henry Cavill), the film hits theaters with some budget-busting delay.
The quality of the summer blockbusters has been lacking so far, so hope rests on Ethan Hunt’s shoulders. Can Mission: Impossible 7 live up to the high expectations? The reviews are pretty much unanimous.
This is the story of Tom Cruise’s latest impossible mission
This time, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team around technology expert Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) and computer whisperer Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) must prevent a new weapon from falling into the wrong hands . An artificial intelligence is out of control. Ethan meets old friends like the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) and a thief (Hayley Atwell), who is also after the AI.
Paramount
Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 7
The so far 7th part of the series, based on the series Kobra, you take over! is based, will not tell his story to the end. For that, similar to Across the Spider-Verse and Fast & Furious 10, we’ll have to wait for the sequel.
Mission: Impossible 7 offers pulsating action with a top cast
Part 7 currently has 98 percent positive reviews on the aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and also a good 82 points out of 100 on the competitor Metacritic. Not surprisingly, many reviews agree: The action is the most compelling aspect of the film, but the actors are also commended.
In Little White Lies, Adam Woodward writes:
Cruise and his longtime directing partner Christopher McQuarrie have once again directed some absolutely stunning scenes – a pulsing chase through the narrow streets of Rome will make you reach for a seat belt […].
Woodward also highlights the chemistry between acting trio Hayley Atwell, Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise. Every time the film deviates from that, it suffers.
Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times compares the explosive entertainment to its predecessors:
The quality of the action here is mostly more fluid and satisfying than breathtaking; there’s nothing here that rivals De Palma’s slickest set pieces, or Ethan’s dizzying climb up the walls of the Burj Khalifa in Ghost Protocol […]. But McQuarrie’s typically meticulous script (this time alongside Erik Jendresen) makes up for what his directing may lack in sheer enthusiasm.
“163 minutes of adrenaline and excitement”
Time’s Stephanie Zacharek writes about the relationship between action and plot:
It’s not giving too much away to say that the plot of Dead Reckoning Part One […] after about a third is practically no longer comprehensible. The story only serves as a flimsy connective tissue between Tom’s [Cruise] dominated stunts, but maybe that’s enough. Seemingly bigger movies gave us less.
Alfonso Duralde of The Film Verdict sums up the tenor of the mostly euphoric voices:
Dead Reckoning pays homage to an era when ‘summer blockbusters’ represented something different from what studios produced the other nine months of the year 163 minutes full of adrenaline and excitement […].
Mission: Impossible 7 – Dead Reckoning Part One starts on July 13, 2023 in German cinemas. The budget is estimated at $290 million, partly because of escalating costs during the coronavirus pandemic. Part 4 is currently being filmed and will follow next year.