In dictionaries, there should be the picture of Tom Cruise next to the word “blockbuster”. How does the actor of more than 61 years to be always so punchy in films always more spectacular? This is one of the questions posed Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part 1 by Christopher McQuarrie.
Its hero, Ethan Hunt, must save the world. Nothing new. What is, are the personal and universal issues facing the hero. A fearsome weapon, a villain from the past and a beautiful thief await him in this first episode of a diptych that makes a sigh of frustration “oooooh” when it ends.
Take time for emotion
“We wanted to tell the story in two opuses because we wanted to have time to convey more emotions”, confides Christopher McQuarrie to the American cinema site Collider. And he doesn’t lie. Ethan Hun faces difficult choices and painful deaths. The action is therefore not the only element to which the filmmaker clung to put the star in the spotlight.
Tom Cruise, elegant, also let him give a good place to his female partners (Hayley Atwell, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby and Pom Klementieff) and male (Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Esai Morales).
We are sufficiently interested in these characters so that their fate does not leave anyone indifferent, which is very clever, especially since the plot, effective, holds up better than the stuntmen of the film.
better than expected
But, of course, the strong point of the case comes from highly touted stunt scenes during the film’s promotion. Surprise: they are even more amazing than we expected! Tom Cruise paid with his own person, clinging to a train car or parachuting while sitting on a motorcycle from a cliff. It’s breathtaking.
Not just because the actor makes a point of performing his stunts himself, but because he seems to take such risk-taking as perfectly natural. The suspense is there, of course, but the grace of Tom Cruise makes the whole magical, transforming the spectator into a child of wonder.
We pity the other blockbusters who will compete against Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part 1 this summer. They will struggle to reach the level of mastery in the entertainment provided by Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie for this successful first part beyond our expectations.