“Mission: Impossible: Deadly Judgment”, a more relaxed installment

Tom Cruise (Syracuse, New York, 61 years old) says that it is his intention keep giving life to Ethan Hunt, an IMF agent, at least until he’s 80, like Harrison Ford did with Indiana Jones. And it’s hard not to believe that, because the actor is still in enviable shape. Tumač premieres today the seventh installment of the saga, Mission Impossible: Death Sentence – Part 1.

Directed by Christopher McQuarriewith whom he first collaborated in Stundous jack reacher (2012) and in charge of the last four installments of the franchise—yes, he is also responsible for the second installment, which should arrive next year—it is true that since Brian de Palma laid the foundations with Mission Impossible 1996, a product based on the American television series, broadcast on CBS between 1966 and 1973, has become one of the most relevant in the field of espionage, action and adventure, mainly due to its celebrated action sequences and entertaining plots, thanks to the brilliant masks with which Almost anyone can become a Hunt.

It was, however, Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), which slightly changed the rules of the game. If the first three parts were quite self-contained, from the fourth a kind of cinematic universe was established in which Ethan Hunt ceased to be this lone agent working for the IMF — yes, like the International Monetary Fund — and his stories and his personal relationships with characters such as are Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) or Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) began to have a greater presence and continuity during successive adventures.

And you can make it to the team Mission Impossible: Death Sentence – Part 1. Lasting 2 hours and 43 minutes, the tape begins in the depths of the Bering Sea, when the crew of a submarine is the victim of an ambush that ends in tragedy and all this, apparently, by artificial intelligence in the form of a virus that takes over every device that uses a network of networks to communicate. In a year where we see artificial intelligence getting stronger and stronger, with tools like ChatGPT, Bard, Bing Chat or Nightcafe that will change everything, using AI as a big threat and the big villain of this delivery is a great twist and gives a good representation the franchise’s ability to connect with the present.

solid argument

After the attack, Hunt will be given a task the search for the key which appears to provide access to a troubling technology. So begins a film that’s much looser than the last, more concerned with stringing together solid arguments, perhaps with the occasional rather leaden sequence – the party dialogue is, for the most part, excruciating – than stringing together explosive sequence after explosive sequence. To the script, intricate as usual, with deceit, betrayal and double-dealing and light touches of comedy — especially funny is the couple formed by Hunt and Grace, played by Hayley Atwell — here we have to add sabotage, false communication and deepfake. Of course, it remains ironic that the incredible concoction that viewers have embraced since the show’s inception, the use of masks to change identities, has become a reality through the screen in an age where fake news They are our daily bread.

Artificial intelligence as a dangerous villain

That Mission Impossible: Death Sentence – Part 1 calls for a certain calm, does not mean that the film is not exempt from strong action sequences. Exactly the opposite. In this sense, the film begins with a big shootout during a storm in the desert, and from there it goes to fights in the narrow streets of Venice, a somewhat weaker chase in a yellow Fiat, a stagecoach train — not It is interesting that the last of Indiana Jones and this one coincided in time with relatively similar series—, a very fine and tense tribute to the second part of the video game Uncharted and, of course, the scene in which Cruise, willing to risk his life in every shot, jumps into the void with a motorcycle from the top of a mountain, a sequence that is repeated in all the movements of the film and which the production team did not hesitate to advance with to leave in December last year. Despite all that, the feature film has its problems. Perhaps the most serious, and as was the case with the recent one Spider-Man: Crossing the Multiverse, or that it doesn’t have a real ending, despite being the longest film in the franchise with 163 minutes of footage. Of course, at least his end isn’t as listless as Spider-Man’s.

In short, and awaiting the outcome with the second part, which will be published in June next year, Mission Impossible: Death Sentence – Part 1 It’s not the best in the franchise, sure, but it won’t disappoint Agent fans. The result is fun thriller with, for the most part, magnificent action sequences, which are devoted to the present, setting up the AI ​​as the villain, as an enemy as intangible as it is dangerous. It is a slightly more relaxed and perhaps more balanced film than the previous ones, but it could use more precision in editing.