Review by C.J. Bunce
After enjoying the unseasonably good weather on its way to what the groundhog promises as an early spring, what are you going to watch on the TV when you get home? Paramount+ has not one but two big winners streaming right now, both starring Tom Cruise, and both major league action movies.
So which should you choose? On the one hand you have the seventh Mission: Impossible movie: Dead Reckoning, an Academy Award-nominated movie for what are likely the best stunt scenes in a movie yet. Then there is the ultimate throwback: Top Gun: Maverick, an Academy Award-winning sequel you didn’t know you wanted. If you love Cruise, or you loved Top Gun or the Mission: Impossible movies, you’ve probably already caught one or both. But this is for those who don’t care one way or another about either.
So which will you choose?
Let’s dig into these movies, both starring Tom Cruise who, despite his age, still is at the top of his game. Both movies were delayed by the pandemic, but ultimately affected only marginally if at all at the box office. Both were created by Cruise as the key decision maker, financed by him, a filmmaker known for excellence in production and crews. Both feature Cruise doing his own stunts in many scenes. Both reflect an actor able to take himself less seriously than earlier in his career. One is an Oscar winner, the other will likely take an Oscar home this year. Let’s face it: You can bank on both for action spectacle and quality. How about story?
The unpredicted, unthinkable sequel to the 1986 classic Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick carries forward with Tom Cruise as Captain Pete Mitchell, call sign Maverick, still flying, and still with the same attitude. Directed by Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion), the film co-stars Jon Hamm (Baby Driver, Mad Men) and Jennifer Connelly (Labyrinth, Alita: Battle Angel). The plot finds Maverick beyond the end of a normal military career, protected from his rogue antics by Ice Man, now an admiral, still played by Val Kilmer. Maverick is called in for a special mission: The bad guys “over there” have a secret base with a surprise weapon that means doom and gloom for the world. It’s up to Maverick to choose the top flyers to take on a suicide mission, a two minute flight up a mountain to drop a bomb at a specific target and blow up a modern day Navarone, with guns a blazing from every angle. Oh, and one of the aviator candidates for the mission is his old pal Goose’s kid, played by Miles Teller (The Offer, Spiderhead), call sign Rooster.
The surprise, first, is in the script, from multiple contributors. The mission is straight out of Star Wars, or if you prefer, Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress, which George Lucas tapped for his movie. Lucas used actual WWII aerial footage as his source material for his raid on the Death Star. Top Gun: Maverick takes that full circle, using Lucas’s bombing run, and possibly other early dogfight footage, in its key action sequences. From an action perspective, the result is superb.
As for other story elements, Top Gun: Maverick is also an improvement on the original in nearly every way. Connelly is a former love interest who doesn’t need Maverick and doesn’t swoon goofily for him as in the original, and Cruise and Connelly have an easy chemistry missing from the original. If you liked the sex and “steam” of the first movie, it’s the one element gone now… happily. Cruise is older and so is Maverick. The aerial candidates have a woman this time (only one…), FUBAR co-star Monica Barbaro, who adds a level of realism to the mix. But Cruise also has that quality that made Kevin Costner’s characters work, allowing his character to look confused, sometimes even dumb, not always the confident hero. And it works for him, and the movie, in spades.
Mission: Impossible–Dead Reckoning Part One has the misfortune of a long title and those Part One, Part Two, etc., bits need eliminated from Hollywood titles once and for all. They do nothing to help promote a movie. But it’s just a title. As a sequel in the Mission: Impossible series, it bests the previous best entry, Mission: Impossible–Fallout, which co-starred Henry Cavill. As big action goes, it’s going to be difficult to top the car chase sequences, the Murder “of” the Orient Express scene, and the biggest advertised stunt sequence–Cruise’s hero Ethan Hunt taking a motorcycle over a mountain edge–isn’t even the best of the movie. Back are more clever disguises, more suitcase-printed faces, more Hunt trying to protect former team members and romantic interests, more doomsday villains and weapons. It’s James Bond, American style, in a movie bigger and better than most Bond movies.
In Mission: Impossible–Dead Reckoning Cruise brings back team members Simon Pegg as Benji, Ving Rhames as Luther, and Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa. As much as Ethan Hunt steers the boat, it’s new character Grace, played by Marvel Peggy Carter actress Hayley Atwell, who is showcased as a master thief and grifter, and potential new Impossible Mission Force operative. A key chase scene with Cruise and Atwell has both a motorcycle and several cars rolled, toppled, swapped… and the best has them being chased in what looks a lot like a European bumper car (actually a Fiat 500 in the style of Miyazaki’s Lupin III). The chaser is Guardians of the Galaxy alumna Pom Klementieff as a badass villain in pursuit in a Hummer-type vehicle. It all just might surpass last year’s Fast X chase and race scenes.
Hunt & Co. are charged with finding a special key in two parts–a cruciform key (no relationship to the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword), which supposedly can be used to control the Entity–a new artificial intelligence (very similar to Mrs. Davis in Mrs. Davis) that is said to have become sentient. So the film is also topically relevant. But Hunt has several steps to go through to even hope to figure out what the key is for and how to get to the whereabouts of the Entity. Although the film doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, Part Two (to be renamed) is going to be all about The Hunt for Red October–a Russian post-modern submarine that carries the Entity’s hardware. This isn’t a spoiler–it’s revealed in the very first scene of Part One.
The franchise brings back Vanessa Kirby as master manipulator and wannabe supervillain The White Widow, Esai Morales as the guy who set Hunt onto a life in the IMF years ago, and Henry Czerny as the man in charge. The music from the original series is always a co-star, too. Smaller roles feature The Princess Bride’s Cary Elwes, Luther’s Indira Varma, and Sherlock’s Mark Gatiss. But which actor joins Cruise in both Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible–Dead Reckoning? That’s The Mandalorian and Transformers actor Charles Parnell–as a good government guy in both films.
If you want nostalgia, opt for Top Gun: Maverick. If you want action… it’s a toss-up. It’s Star Wars 2020s style or Mission: Impossible–Dead Reckoning, a spy movie about AI that isn’t at all as boring as that sounds.
So which will you choose? How about watching them both?
Both highly recommended–catch Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible–Dead Reckoning, now streaming on Paramount+.
