4/5
I recently had a discussion with a friend about movies that would be coming out recently we should catch. Barbie. Oppenheimer. Talk to Me (a new A24 horror movie, which I watched yesterday and will be reviewing soon). When I casually mentioned the new Mission Impossible movie, he said that he wouldn’t be watching it. For a second I thought he was joking before he told me that he’s looking for something fresh in a story. He’s looking for meaning. He’s not looking for a story that starts with the card “Venice, Italy” and goes to “London, UK” amidst 50 locations. An action movie is rooted in predictability and tropes, he told me, and when he knows what’s going to happen why would he watch it?
I’d been thinking about this for the past few days, because he is-in a way-right. An action movie does mean all of these tropes. There’s often no depth to the writing, not a message we can take home. Cool people doing cool things can only be fresh until a moment right? Very few in the middle have depth, but even that is masked but he consistent use of tropes that we’ve been seeing for 50 years. The screenplay should be racy. The action should be over-the-top. The movie should have explosions. The stakes should be high, but not high at the same time. And in the end, the bonafide action stars walks his way to the bank right?
With these thoughts, I sat down for MI-7. Still excited, but definitely a bit wary. What can make MI-7 beat those tropes? I know the end result. Is there something else it can have? And by the end, I was served up an enthralling reminder as to why Mission Impossible as a series stands out from the rest. Why it doesn’t avoid the tropes, but embraces them to make it as epic as possible. Why the writing doesn’t explore much and sets simple stakes but explores so much in the stakes it has at the same time. And why Tom Cruise, the man who seems to have cracked the code to making such brilliant action movies, is Tom Cruise. here’s a template, but the execution never makes it feel like a template; it rather serves as a familiar gateway to a world of heart-pounding stunts and edge-of-seat feats (my heart is racing as I type this). I’m happy to say that, for me, MI-7 is no different.
PLOT:
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is sent on another mission to rescue Ilsa Faust, an old friend we might recognize from Rogue Nation, who is caught in the midst of a race to find two parts of a key that controls the Entity, a incredibly complex AI system that has gone rogue and is infiltrating nations security breaches worldwide. When Ethan Hunt gets dragged into the pot with Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), his interactions to get the key and destroy The Entity once in for hall lead him to Grace (Hayley Atwell) and her sneaky ways to get the key for herself. The plot and what journey Hunt takes makes up the rest of the story.
WRITING:
The beauty of the MI series is how distinct one movie can seem from the other with its signature style of crafting events. Christopher McQuarrie, who is a long time friend of Tom Cruise as well, and Erik Jendersen craft a plot where the first thing that they get bang on the nail is elevating the stakes and creating a MI-worthy villain. The quote “Fear the unknown” has not applied to an action movie more that it has applied to MI. With the surroundings of AI and what we know of it, McQuarrie and Jensen present The Entity as a very smart system that is unpredictable and is always ahead of Hunt at every step. Rather than giving it to us straight up in a description, McQuarrie and Jensen let the events themselves unravel how capable The Entity is; in every action scene there’s always a certain drop to how The Entity has outsmarted them, leaving the capabilities and the power to the imagination of the audience and, to the advantage of McQuarrie as a director, much more exaggerated in their imaginations. When we saw Henry Cavill in Fallout, we know what Hunt is up against and it leads our expectations despite us knowing the end result. In MI-7, we know the end result but we don’t know what journey its going to take, enhancing the stakes that much more and leaving The Entity as somehow, a very good MI-villain. What works is also the re-introduction of a crucial character from the series that Hunt has a connection to being a “representative” of The Entity, heightening its impact.
Now, from a movie perspective, McQuarrie and Jensen follow a lot of action movie tropes. There’s the cut scenes, the introduction of locations, the classic explosions, all of which doesn’t take away from the movie but adds a hint of familiarity. We know what the end result is, which always adds a hint of familiarity to the proceedings. The screenplay is fast, for good measure as we’ll explore later, but sometimes becomes a little bit too fast. Unlike Top Gun: Maverick, MI-7 doesn’t give any breathing space for the development of characters or locations. It’s high octane action from frame one, and the locations just lend itself to the action rather than establishing a base and a sense of localization. the premise despite being one of substance where they can delve into Hunt’s psyche barely does so.
I really enjoyed a scene where Benji and Hunt dissect The Entity and leads to a realization of some sort of Hunt. I wish there was a little bit more of that, especially between Hunt and Ilsa. Their track seemed a little bit out of place and too quick. For the first 15 minutes, the movie stumbles a little bit in establishing the balance between scenes and getting the writing to flow from the movie. There are jumps to various locations that definitely could have been smoother as it seems like a little bit of a teleportation.
That being said, with these small flaws aside, the writing is still very good. Establishing a spy thriller straight up without depending too much on the name isn’t easy, and Mi-7 keeps you locked to your seat from the moment The Entity comes officially into play. Apart from establishing the stakes so well, McQuarrie easily glides through many events with a aura of comfortability; even in those events, the various arcs are smoothly written and leave nothing behind for us to speculate on, usually an action movies biggest nemesis. Every character has a purpose for every scene, and that purpose easily shifts over to the next. It’s the way that the writing outlines the arc that every character should take well and gives something of substance to almost every character irrespective of runtime. We walk away with not only the names, but the progression of almost every character we see.
Take the airport sequence. In the span of 10 minutes, apart from Cruise’s objective, Benji has something going on, Luther is suddenly thrown into danger, Atwell enters the scene, a old nemesis of Hunt comes back, The Entity still lingers around the scene, and amidst all of this the classic “catch Ethan Hunt” routine still happens. It’s very easy to get lost in this but every time the writing shifts it shifts with the precision of a sharp butter knife. We never get lost throughout the scene, and as an undercurrent the writers keep the stakes, the arcs, and the goal in sight. Every block that follows, there’s always plot development too so that we don’t get bored of the stakes or the events that follow. Granted, its plot development at a surface level, but when so much about the scene is going on it doesn’t matter. We know that point A will lead to point C at a point, but its the journey through each block that has been written superbly.
The screenplay is also one element that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat and leaves MI-7 as high octane as it can. Despite moving a bit too fast, the pace helps with fast-tracking the movie and the proceedings that encapsulate it. Every event beautifully leads to the next, which is why the location teleporting doesn’t seem as sudden or abrupt as it could. Complemented by the execution, the screenplay sets out to develop the conflict and the espionage of the movie quite precisely without an ounce of regression. Even the vast locations, apart from looking absolutely amazing, works well. Rather than localizing the movie, MI-7 itself becomes globetrotting with the various locations adding a new length or aspect to the proceedings themselves. It would have been nice to be very familiar with a location, but almost every location you go to McQuarrie and team do a fantastic job of setting the stage apart with their direction (more to be talked later).
Ultimately, the writing is predictable with a few tropes, but these tropes have been done so well. Every time Hunt escapes the scene, which we know he’s going to escape, we still have at hands in our mouth and glee with joy when he does. The last 30 minutes of the movie is an indication of how well MI-7 becomes an action movie and keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, almost transitioning into a thriller of sorts, setting up the next part well without a cliffhanger but more of a expectation. For the most part, the writing is pretty sharp; even when its not, the experienced McQuarrie as a director steps in really lift MI-7 into a gem of an action movie.
DIRECTION:
McQuarrie as a director is absolutely on the top of his game and the reason that MI-7 stands out from the rest of the series. As a director, he has such a distinct style that he’s smartly written into the movie as well, despite the events being straightforward. We see this style in Top Gun too, as he was a co-writer. But this time, he becomes a director, and boy does he knock it out of the park.
Starting from the moment that the movie shoots to a submarine, each and every second of the movie is directed with a clear vision and beautiful storytelling of each of the events. He truly lets us into the workings of every event and presses the conflict further throughout. There are whistle worthy moments that don’t just come from absolutely improbable stunts; there are also moments that are just staged and set so energetically with a base of, as we call in Indian cinema, “mass”.
A scene where Tom Cruise takes off a mask should be just on paper, and could have been very straightforward. But McQuarrie fills the room with smoke. He sets up inklings of the reveal from the beginning and continues to focus on Cruise as a character. The event itself is predictable but he keeps a level of suspense. Then, at the snap, he fills the room with smoke and, amidst the commotion, stages the big reveal of THE TOM CRUISE. Paired with Cruise’s charisma and screen presence, this is but a sample at what McQuarrie brings forward.
Particularly impressive is how well he executes every action block. The writing is fast and it’s very easy to get lost in the pace of the movie, as the events go forward at a jet speed. The action scenes themselves are so high-octane that they could have been incorrigible by the end. But McQuarrie’s vision throughout is set by clarity that leads each action block to victory. It’s incredibly hard to direct action like this solely because of how over the top it is; something like a car chase on the streets of Europe, but an extensive one that spans different locations. He treats each challenge with grace, and uses the inbuilt tropes of an action movie such as the resolution and the mandatory turns to infuse the events with energy. Every time, he ends it with higher stakes than the next, eventually leading to a blockbuster finish.
Every different setting yields something different from McQuarrie’s vision; the desert fight is more gun based and brutal, the airport fight is stylish and smooth, a fight in a palace at Venice is more visceral and aggressive as the entire palace is lit fantastically. It’s when McQuarrie realizes that the writing won’t localize him with the advantage of a specific location that he makes every location his own, per say. The weakness becomes an advantage. Despite having over the top action, the way McQuarrie envelops it into the scale never makes it seem over the top but grand rather.
His absolute peak comes at the end action block where there’s a train, a cliff, the culmination of the conflict, and multiple characters each with their own story to tell. McQuarrie highlights each character’s arc and events with conviction and slowly builds up to some of the best action I’ve seen in the penultimate moments of a movie. The well hyped cliff scene is beautifully narrated and the stakes are slowly built up till Ethan Hunt makes that jump, yielding a shriek of joy. But that’s not even the best part. The action keeps getting grander and grander as there’s a mini story occurring with each of the characters inside of the train. Despite us knowing how it ends, the last fight on top of the train is visceral and the outcome in which Hunt and Grace deal with it is phenomenal. McQuarrie as a director shows his process especially when every element of the train is scrutinized; with a high sense of stakes, every element is edge of seat as the movie risks a lot, but lands safely.
When the credits roll in the end, its how well-paced, supremely entertaining, and beyond all that how memorable McQuarrie presents MI-7 as a story. My heart was racing because of how fast the movie went and how easy McQuarrie transitioned in every element. When there is no story, he takes tropes and subverts them into risky decisions such as stunts that, if done slightly off, can come off as very caricaturish. Fortunately, the duo of McQuarrie and Cruise who did it with Fallout do it again with Dead Reckoning.
PERFORMANCES:
Tom Cruise becomes the ideal man in this movie; there’s just no other way to put it. As Ethan Hunt, he oozes charisma, screen presence, and style as he navigates the conflict and the struggles of Ethan Hunt so well. The writing gives him scope to not just be this monotone killing machine who wins, but rather a character who has complex emotions and faces losses. It goes without saying that there isn’t an action hero like Cruise, who does his own stunts with awe and sets the screen on fire. A true treat seeing Cruise like this even when he’s crossed his 50’s. Hayley Atwell does really well too; she matches Cruise’s energy in the action sequences, accentuates the sexual tension between them, and emotionally even hits her mark. The scene right before they boarded the train is an indicator of this. Rebecca Ferguson shines in her part; I wish she got more scenes with Cruise as I really wanted to see their dynamic, but with what she has its done well. Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg as the sidekicks Luther and Benji respectively provide humor when needed and emotional heft as well. Esai Morales is menacing as Gabriel, and the rest do their bill.
TECHNICALITIES:
Technicalities are world-class, as they should be for an action movie. BGM by Lorne Balfe is absolutely breathtaking and filled the hall with a boom; personally, it was really nice to hear the classic MI theme again. Sound design needs a mention; especially near the ending, it felt like every element of the action had an individual sound that all merged together to create such an impact. Cinematography by Fraser Taggart is superb; frames such as Hunt running across the airport skyline as breath-taking and the action is narrated with a visual class to it. I had kind of hoped they used IMAX camera to shoot, as it would have accentuated the feel so much more, but just a personal wish. Editing is very smooth and perfectly complements the nature of the writing and direction. Dialogues are standard and production values are brilliant as expected.
SUMMARY (TLDR):
So 2 hours and 40 minutes later, I’m here to triumphantly report that yes, MI-7 has all of the tropes that makes an action movie cliche. Yes there are unbelievable stunts. Yes there isn’t much depth to the writing. Yes the screenplay gets racy, and yes there are explosions. The movie starts off with a cut scene of “Submarine, Russia, Sevastopol”, and Venice is visited for sure. But is MI-7 cliche? The stunts are over-the-top, but at the same time, the stunts are all done in real life by Tom Cruise, lending to the believability. The writing sets up the character of Ethan Hunt and his relations well, defining a scope for each character. Locations are used superbly in the action. Explosions add to the grandeur. Top it off with amazing direction. MI-7 is why action movies is revered by so many people, despite being cliche. Its the experience of a lifetime seeing that level of heart-pounding events in a story that you become invested in. So for those reasons, and for my love of action movies, I heartily recommend MI-7: Dead Reckoning as an action spectacle! Go watch immediately!
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