Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023)
Way way too long and with plenty of underused potential, but still a good deal of impressive scenes. I liked this a little more than Fallout. The humor makes a welcoming return and Grace makes for a refreshing addition as someone competent in her own field, but still way out of her depth when Hunt throws her into all kinds of crazy spy situations. I found the action to look better and be more interesting here than in Fallout, probably due to the added self-aware humor.
I do however have some major issues with the scripts and directing choices. The concept of an AI that forces the team to go analog because nothing digital can be trusted is a really good and relevant problem to tackle, and it has tons of potential to be really good. It just isn’t used that much outside a few scenes here and there. Maybe it will be more prevalent in the second part, because here it is just an almost superfluous backstory for the chase for the key that makes up most of the film. I also see it has no reason to be this long and the running time is padded with clunky badly written exposition dialogue. It simply isn’t that interesting what that key does with how it is setup here.
Brian de Palma used the askew so called Dutch-angle to perfection in the first movie and it would have been fine to use the same technique here where it could have made sense. However, McQuarrie uses it here all the time making it lose all meaning and impact. I know McQuarrie wants to make the movies different and has clearly tried to change styles between the three movies he has directed, but I think he nailed it the first time around in Rogue Nation.
Rating: 3.5