I’m not a particularly big fan of Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One from earlier this summer, but I can appreciate the macro metaphor it presents about modern Hollywood. In featuring Ethan Hunt in a fight against a powerful artificial intelligence called The Entity, the movie is essentially a showdown between Tom Cruise, the champion of big, bold, and practical cinema, and homogenized artifice of the digital age. The plotting is thin at best and it doesn’t compare well its predecessors in the franchise, but it does all the same make an effective statement about the power of “real.”
Release Date: August 11, 2023
Directed By: Tom Harper
Written By: Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder
Starring: Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Paul Ready, Jing Lusi, Alia Bhatt, Sophie Okonedo, and Matthias Schweighöfer
Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and some language
Runtime: 122 minutes
