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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nLast summer, when \u201cTop Gun: Maverick\u201d was making roughly all the money printed in the United States during that fiscal quarter, I read a number of articles (many publications jumped on the trend at once) calling Tom Cruise various iterations of \u201cThe Last Movie Star.\u201d The moniker is obviously an exaggeration \u2013 Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt haven\u2019t exactly been left in the dust in Hollywood \u2013 but it\u2019s understandable where it comes from. It may take a few beats to remember that the \u201cAvatar\u201d movies star Sam Worthington or that Tom Holland is the most recent (live-action) version of Spider-Man, but there is no such confusion with a Tom Cruise movie. I bet most people, when discussing the \u201cMission: Impossible\u201d movies, say \u201cTom Cruise\u201d instead of his character\u2019s name of Ethan Hunt. For that matter, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if people say \u201cTom Cruise\u201d instead of \u201cJerry Maguire\u201d when discussing the film named after the character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of this is to say that Tom Cruise has an undeniable screen presence and charisma. He certainly has the straight-up talent to justify this popularity, but his blockbuster appeal is about more than that. He clearly believes that if he\u2019s going to be at the top of the industry, he should push himself harder than the rest of the industry. That\u2019s why he insists on undertaking difficult tasks like long sequences of running and dangerous stunts involving planes and motorcycles. This kind of dedication is why \u201cMission: Impossible\u201d is a respectable franchise unto itself and not the James Bond knockoff that it would be otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new installment sees Hunt racing around the globe to stop The Entity, a computer program that has seemingly become sentient and bent on world domination. Whoever can access The Entity first, whether it\u2019s a government or an individual, can basically control the world. Hunt is initially sanctioned by the U.S. government, represented by Impossible Mission Force leader Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), but he soon realizes that nobody should be allowed to have that much power, so he goes on a rogue mission to destroy The Entity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hunt is aided by faithful teammates Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg) and Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson). Complicating matters are money-driven duplicitous characters like high-class pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell) and black-market arms dealer Alanna (Vanessa Kirby). Full-on villains include assassin Gabriel (Esai Morales) and his henchwoman Paris (Pom Klementieff, gleefully maniacal in a role that frankly doesn\u2019t call for it), who are apparently representing The Entity itself, and no, I\u2019m not sure how that business relationship works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The mission involves gaining possession of two halves of a key and then figuring out what exactly the key opens. It also involves an elaborate series of druggings, pickpocketings, thievery, bomb scares, knife-fights, shootouts, car chases, crosses and double crosses, and a ton of antics with a runaway train. Oh, and those super-realistic masks that this series loves come into play. This movie really hopes you like Vanessa Kirby, because you\u2019re getting a double dose of her here (no complaints from me).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I spent most of this movie having a hard time deciding if it was worth recommending. Cruise and his team are their usual delightful selves, but it seems like this movie\u2019s been done several times before. The villains are more memorable than some of the others in this series, but their motivations are questionable. The action is mostly pretty exciting, but the stakes are affected by the \u201cPart One\u201d in the film\u2019s title, which tells me that nothing too conclusive is going to happen here. At the last minute, the film pulled out an effective action sequence with a train that finally earned it my endorsement. I reckon you\u2019ll have a good time with the seventh \u201cMission: Impossible\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMission: Impossible \u2013 Dead Reckoning Part One\u201d is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some language and suggestive material. Its running time is 163 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver Last summer, when \u201cTop Gun: Maverick\u201d was making roughly all the money printed in the United States during that fiscal quarter, I read a number of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":58355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2444],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58356,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58354\/revisions\/58356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}