.

I didn’t see Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in the cinema. All the others I did but not that one.

It is interesting that the one I was less fussed about at the time was the one where the series really found its feet, at least in terms of its current incarnation. I really rate numbers 1 and 3 (Ghost Protocol was the fourth) but all of the early movies feel quite different to what we are getting currently. In many respects Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is a totally different character now, and tonally those early films were almost incomparable. Conventional wisdom is that Fallout is the best one (number 6) but I still prefer Rogue Nation (number 5).

This new instalment doesn’t challenge either of those two in terms of overall quality but Dead Reckoning (part 1) is still a brilliant spy movie and provides a superb night out at the cinema. It is leagues ahead of most films of its type and after the two series synchronised in 2015* it may even have eclipsed the king of the genre; James Bond. (*The plots of Rogue Nation and Spectre were practically identical- see here.)

Let’s get the niggles out of the way first. There is a scene near the start where a number of security agency leads are meeting to discuss the world’s latest threat and they are all talking in turn in a way that would absolutely never happen in reality. It felt oddly performed, as if Samuel Beckett had written an episode of Homeland, and it brought me right out of the film. There is also a point later where someone manually uncouples a train from a carriage it is pulling, which is one of my big movie bugbears. (A typical passenger car weighs thirty to forty tonnes, requiring a force of least one hundred pounds to achieve motion, and at above thirty miles an hour this is dramatically compounded by additional air pressure. Seriously, no one is lifting that joining pin out by hand.)

More of an issue than either of these though is that Hunt is given a new backstory that is entirely based on the tired trope of women being fridged (if you’re not familiar with this idea, read about it here). This is then extended as a theme throughout the whole film; at one point he is even asked to choose who gets fridged next. It is disappointing to see this in a series of movies that has featured a succession of good female characters (particularly no. 4 which is probably why it’s my favourite) and then having added another, gathers three of them together and reduces them to plot devices in the ongoing narrative of the man. I’m not happy about it.

.

These are only the blunt aspects of an otherwise sharp two edged sword though. The new female player that comes in to this, Hayley Atwell’s Grace, is superb. Unlike Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa, and many of the women that have come before her, she is not a highly trained super spy. Better than Michelle Monaghan’s Julia though, she is more than just someone who is either along for the ride or in the way. The skills she does have put her neatly alongside Thandiwe Newton’s Nyah from Mission: Impossible 2, but she is much less of a damsel in distress than she became in that film. Her interplay with Cruise and her whole characterisation are superb and Atwell plays her brilliantly. This is particularly good to see after the actor’s last great screen persona, Peggy Carter, was a little diminished by her final appearance in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. The way that a returning Vanessa Kirby mixes in with Grace is a real highlight of the movie too.

Apart from the one aforementioned thing, the train stuff isn’t all bad either. Quite the opposite. There are several key action scenes in the movie, including a really well shot car chase through Rome that out classes the one in Fast X. The extended sequence on the train, that finds every possible way of playing with this specific environment, is particularly wonderful though. There have been lots of classic locomotive moments in cinema; From Russia with Love, Speed, Murder on the Orient Express, Harry Potter, Skyfall, The General, Bridge on the River Kwai, Back to the Future 3, North by Northwest and indeed the very first Mission: Impossible, all widely varied and this nods to every one of them while still going to places that are original and exciting. It is also here that the movie refinds the sense of humour that has been a part of these films since Ghost Protocol but initially got a bit lost here.

The story this time involves A.I which is both progressive and regressive in how it is dealt with. It shows the dangers of rampant computer sentience but too conveniently finds the key to its destruction. At least it seems to but we won’t know until part two. There are a lot of double parters hitting the big screen right now but this one does it really well, giving enough resolution while still tantalising with what’s to come. I’m not even sure it is much more of a story stretched across two movies than Rogue Nation and Fallout were, but this time they have just labelled it as such.

Tom Cruise is of course great and there are other familiar faces from much loved films as you wish. It might be a little long but it earns its extended runtime and will be one of the best rushes in a Blockbuster Summer with some other big hitters still hoping to be da bomb and be in the pink respectively. No need to wait for the 21st though, get out to the cinema now. That’s your mission.