Blockbuster action movies are designed to stun the audience into submissive acceptance. Complexity, humanity, emotion and beauty are reduced to a few flickering lights in the swirling darkness of death and destruction. This is not a criticism. Great art has sometimes been like that and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is certainly art, though perhaps not great. Anyway, I, for one, was stunned.
The film is certainly art, though perhaps not great, and I, for one, was stunned
For context, this is the seventh Mission: Impossible movie. The first was in 1996 so the hero Tom Cruise, aka Ethan Hunt, is now in his sixties. The fact that he is still alive, in spite of several thousand increasingly exotic attempts to kill him, suggests the franchise should be renamed – perhaps Mission Actually Quite Probable.
He had to survive this one because, as the title suggests, it is only half a film.
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