I can't remember whether or not I wrote anything about the last "Mission: Impossible" movie that came out in 2018. I've gotten tired of this franchise, the same way I seem to have gotten tired of all the big action franchises this year. I predicted that "Dead Reckoning Part One" was going to make a lot of money because it's coming off of Tom Cruise's success with "Top Gun: Maverick" last year. However, "Dead Reckoning Part One" underperformed, maybe because it was a "Part One," maybe because it picked the wrong release date and got clobbered by Barbenheimer, and maybe because this is the first film where I can finally tell, unmistakably, that Tom Cruise is getting old.
Ethan Hunt certainly isn't slowing down, getting into death-defying chases and fighting countless bad guys. He goes rogue almost immediately, as the race is on to recover a stolen key that may be the only chance to stop an evil AI called the Entity, and the evil terrorist Gabriel (Esai Morales) who is in league with it. Ilsa Faust from "Rogue Nation" and "Fallout" is back, but Hunt shares most of the big action set pieces with a thief named Grace (Hayley Attwell), a newcomer who has gotten thoroughly mixed up in the fight over the key. Other returning actors include Edgar Wright, Ving Rhames, Vanessa Kirby, and Henry Czerny, while new additions include Shea Whigham as Briggs, an intelligence officer trying to hunt down Hunt, and Pom Klementieff as an assassin named Paris.
I really dislike the character of Ilsa Faust, which I've realized has nothing to do with Rebecca Ferguson, and everything to do with how terribly written Ilsa is, and how every time an interesting female character falls for Ethan Hunt, she becomes boring in a hurry. The cycle repeats itself here with Grace. Hayley Attwell is bright and snarky and the best part of the film by far. And the second Ethan Hunt starts staring at her intensely, and promising that he'll risk everything to keep her safe, you can see her disappearing into the black hole of being his love interest of the moment. I understand that the "Mission Impossible" movies are trying to distinguish themselves from the James Bond movies, but "Dead Reckoning" is absolutely dire when it comes to romance. I don't buy for a second that Ethan Hunt is actually in love with any of these women.
Frankly, the only thing that works about this movie is the action. The opening scenes, with their endless expository scenes, are stilted and dull. The business with the AI is played straight, and despite the best efforts of talented actors, it all comes off as very silly. It's only when we get to the first cat-and-mouse sequence in the airport that everything seems to snap into focus, and the movie gets down to the business of being entertaining. There are two other massive set pieces - a funny one involving a car chase with our heroes in a yellow Fiat, and a multi-stage train infiltration that involves that shot of Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle over a cliff that's been in all the advertisements. It's wildly impressive stuff, and lives up to the action of any other "Mission: Impossible" installment.
So in the end I felt like I'd gotten my money's worth for the rental fee, but the franchise's formula is stale, and Cruise just can't get away with as much as he used to. I'm sure he'll be making action movies for decades more - see Liam Neeson and Harrison Ford - but his time with "Mission Impossible" really feels like it's nearing its end.
As for "Sound of Freedom," the heavily fictionalized account of Tim Ballard's highly dubious efforts to combat human trafficking in South America, it's not a terrible movie. However, it's certainly not very good, either as action or as melodrama, and Ballard has since been outed as a grifter and a fraud. I feel some acknowledgement of the movie is appropriate, considering how well it did over the summer, but it's going to be better remembered for its unusual marketing tactics and pay-it-forward scheme than anything else. I decided to tack on this assessment at the end of the "Mission Impossible" review because leading man Jim Caviezel's performance is similar to Tom Cruise's - super intense, unconvincing, and more creepy than anything else.
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