I’m not sure what Tom Cruise’s secret is, but I enjoy every one of these Mission Impossible movies even though I barely recall what happens in them by the time I leave the theatre. Admittedly, it’s been a minute since this movie came out and the hype train seems to have moved on to “Barbenheimer” station already, but bear with me as I share a bit of my enjoyment of Cruise’s latest spy-fi adventure (even at a time when we’ve been pretty well saturated with so many of them). My first hat-tip goes to how surprisingly current the theme is, since they probably started working on this movie before the pandemic and yet [spoiler alert] in the age of ChatGPT and friends, they have managed to make artificial intelligence into the villain. Of course it’s not the same kind A.I. that we’re talking about putting on our phones or adding to Google, so it doesn’t really strike with real-world techno-panic like an episode of Black Mirror might. In typical movie monster fashion, this A.I. is a magical, nefarious plot device that acts both as the MacGuffin that everyone wants for its world-dominating power and the OP main villain which can itself control vehicles, technology, and people as the plot demands.

This long-running film franchise (similar to that other fast and furious one) has managed to keep recurring characters in orbits around its main character, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. So we get the return of his stalwart team of Benji (played again by Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) along with Ethan’s spy girlfriend, Ilsa Faust (played by the in-demand actress Rebecca Ferguson — Remember her as Dune‘s Lady Jessica?) and The Crown‘s Vanessa Kirby returning as the notorious “White Widow”. This movie also seemed like a swan song (Is Part Two going to be the last M:I?) seeming to come full circle, reaching back to the first movie to bring Canadian actor Henry Czerny back as Kittridge. They also fooled me (Darn, I should have rewatched the first movie again) into thinking that mysterious villain Gabriel (played by Esai Morales) was in that first one by using some cleverly done flashbacks. His quasi-partner in crime is played by a surprising Pom Klementieff, whose platinum blonde hair is not the only thing that makes her character the polar opposite of her cosmically-mellow breakout role of Mantis in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. Apologies for all the name dropping, but the only other cast member I will call out is Hayley Atwell, whose excellent role as Grace, a high-stakes thief, acts as the perfect Catwoman to Ethan’s Batman.

The plot of the movie is not super complex: the IMF team has to acquire a special cruciform key that unlocks something that can defeat the villainous A.I. (or more precisely they want to maneuver the key into the hands of someone who knows what that “something” is so they can follow and destroy it). This sets up a number of top-notch set pieces that are really what make these movies fun. An elaborate airport scene brings all the pieces into play as Ethan chases the key, along with Atwell’s Grace, around the airport while Benji and Luther provide support that gets out of hand in its own right. There’s a few centerpiece scenes, including an extensive car and motorcycle chase around Rome, as well as the requisite glamorous night party in Venice that is the perfect spy venue for all the groups to meet up. The Italian setting, the arcane lore about the key, the way the A.I. seems a little creepy and demonic — and the unexpected involvement of a cryptex — gave this movie a bit of a Da Vinci Code flavour on top of everything. Finally, the third act is a classic train heist (on the Orient Express no less) and feels like an homage to the first movie’s classic train scene. These bread and butter sequences are all executed with thrilling, big-budget aplomb. It’s great how there’s also an added touch of humour overlaid on these scenes (Pegg’s Benji has been the franchise’s secret weapon all the way back to M:I III).

As perhaps the last big movie star, Cruise can still carry a blockbuster on his shoulders. I’m still not tired of his maverick charm, and he seems fit for all the incredible action sequences (even with his trademark arm-pumping runs). His 60-plus years do not show and when he asks someone to trust him (and jump across a train car for him to catch), they never really hesitate (and neither would I). Though he’s had a number of flops, I don’t really believe that they were his fault — and this is definitely not one of them.

One more side note about my own experience watching this movie is that because of the showing that I wanted to attend, I ended up watching the 4DX version (which adds additional sensory stimuli to enhance the in-theatre experience of viewing the movie). I did not really know what to expect and was quite surprised when the seat started to move around like a mild rollercoaster and wind started to blow from my left (even though the scene was in the desert, the theatre was blowing cool air-conditioned air at me — oh well). At first I was a bit annoyed, judging the 4DX effects as distracting and taking away from my enjoyment of the movie. I felt that it was silly how the rumbling on my seat was similar whether the movie showed someone pressing a button to fire a torpedo or the actual torpedo hitting a submarine. Nevertheless, after gripping my armrests as I watched aerial shots, feeling thumps on my back during fight scenes, and especially being startled by puffs of air hitting the back of my head whenever shots were fired, I was really getting into all of it. All the motion and other sensory stimuli (thankfully I turned off any water spray effects because I saw someone get misted a few times in the seat below mine) were actually engaging me in this movie, and I wondered if I will enjoy the next action movie I watch if the seat merely … sits there. If there is any movie that deserves and does well with the 4DX treatment, this might be it.

Unlike when I was caught unawares by Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse, I went into this expecting a sudden inconclusive ending (“Part One” is right in the title, after all) but it’s not really very cliffhangery — which is ironic because if you’ve seen the trailer you know that Ethan literally jumps off a mountain. There are obviously things to resolve in the next movie, but they could have easily just given it the next name and number in the franchise and kept the story going. I don’t know when Part Two is due, but I will not be up nights wondering about anything left dangling by this movie. In many ways this movie felt very satisfying and I’m glad that I gave it a shot (after watching Amazon Prime Video’s spy-fi series Citadel, I had felt like I had too much of these very extra spy-fi shows/movies). Someone tell Tom I’m looking forward to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two! (4 out of 5)