Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Direction: Christopher McQuarrie
Country: USA

Awesomely scripted, the seventh installment of Mission Impossible franchise, is neither unworthy nor mind-blowing. It features its star, Tom Cruise, in top form, as super-spy Ethan Hunt, who, this time around, fights a ghost from his past - the terrorist Gabriel (Esai Morales) - and a metaphysical Entity that, as a destructive AI parasite, undermines digital communications and threats humanity. The secret to avoiding its propagation is to find the other half of a cruciform key with the help of old IMF teammates, Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), and an unexpected new partner and incorrigible thief, Grace (Hayley Atwell).

Director Christopher McQuarrie directs this well-calibrated, fast-paced action romp with panache, taking in typical car and motorcycle chases, and extending them to an uncontrolled train - the famous Orient Express - crammed with enemies. Although every threatening occurrence is solved last minute with an excess of coincidence and implausibility, the good outweighs the bad via its sense of adventure, ranging motion and thrilling tone. It is escapist entertainment with no fainting spells. Nothing more, nothing less. 

Meeting the canons of the saga while taking the form of an artful spectacle, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One was the most expensive and longest film of the series, but is far from being an extraordinary achievement. Fans can expect Part Two to arrive in 2024.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Direction: Joseph Kosinski 
Country: USA

The return of Top Gun, again with the forever-young Tom Cruise at the center, takes a coherent, sober treatment in the hands of director Joseph Kosinski (Only the Brave, 2017; Oblivion, 2013). Dedicated to the late Tony Scott, who directed the original in 1986, this sequel replaces Kelly McGinnis with Jennifer Connelly as the new love interest of Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise), a subversive US Navy ace pilot who is told to teach and prepare 12 Top Guns graduates for a nearly impossible special mission.

All skillful pilots show absolute respect for what he is and what he has achieved, but one of them, Lieutenant Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller), expresses resentment about a situation from the past. He is the son of Maverick’s deceased best friend, Goose, who was played by Anthony Edwards in the first installment. 

Even not hitting a single beat you don't expect, the film is actually well-paced, fun to watch, and genuinely tense at times. It packs heart and visual flair within a good old fashioned storytelling that often feels nostalgic. It might be schematic and simplistic in its dramatic framework but the action is bracing and it never shortchanges the human scale or the heroic scope.

Kosinski, who understood how to equalize the romance, the drama and the action in the film, is not interested in dazzling us with mind bending ideas or twisty plots. Instead, he sticks with a stylistically coherence that becomes all the more powerful as the film advances. CGI technology was refused in order to deliver the most authentic experience possible, and the spectacular aerial maneuvers of the third act are breathtaking. Top Gun: Maverick is high quality Hollywood entertainment for all generations.

Mission Impossible - Fallout (2018)

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
Country: USA

Under the direction of Christopher McQuarrie, “Mission Impossible - Fallout” is the follow up to “Rogue Nation”. The sixth installment of the MI franchise continues to incorporate Tom Cruise as IMF agent and team leader Ethan Hunt. For the present adventure he teams up with his loyal friend Luther (Ving Rhames), IMF field agent Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), and CIA assassin, August Walker (Henry Cavill), hired to control all his moves.

They all engage on a suicide mission in an attempt to dismantle The Apostles, a terrorist group that emerged from the extint The Syndicate, after the capture of its anarchic leader Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). The group is illegally dealing plutonium cores in Europe and Hunt is assigned to retrieve the hazardous material. However, the secret agents fail to accomplish the mission in Berlin when Ethan decides to put Luther’s life in first place, leaving the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Erica Sloane (Angela Bassett), in a pile of nerves.

With the agent’s double life featured through an encounter with his estranged wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan), the film advances at high speed, relying on the tension created by interminable and often overdone motorcycle/car chases that take us to inevitably packed crossroads and confined dead alleys. Besides this, we have supplementary manhunt mania in Kashmir, this time involving a plane and a helicopter; agile physical confrontations; advanced technology methods; and dangerous transactions with sudden ambushes.

Co-produced by McQuarrie, Cruise, JJ Abrams (“Super 8”; “Star Trek”; “Star Wars: The Force awakens”), and Jake Myers (“Dunkirk”, “The Revenant”, “Interstellar”), this blockbuster satisfies in its purpose but doesn’t earn the title of ‘impossible to miss’.

American Made (2017)

Directed by Doug Liman
Country: USA

Based on a true story, “American Made” just validates the rumors that CIA agents are or had been involved in drug trafficking, in a clear exertion of influences and abuse of power to stuff their pockets with large sums of money.

That was exactly the story of Barry Seal, comfortably impersonated by Tom Cruise, a devious former TWA pilot in the late 70s who abandoned the job to operate clandestine missions for the CIA, including gun deliveries to the Nicaraguan Contras in Honduras. His actions consisted in flying a small plane toward uneasy South American countries in order to drop off and pick up sensitive merchandise. However, seduced by abundant hard cash, he started smuggling cocaine for a Colombian trio of avid drug lords such as Jorge Ochoa, Carlos Lehder, and Pablo Escobar.

Caught several times and temporarily arrested for his wrongdoings, Seal was always called back to the CIA and treated with patience and consideration by the case officer who hired him, Monty Schaffer (Domhnall Gleeson). He continued playing on both sides at his own convenience until exposed as an undercover agent and turned into a priority target for the traffickers when a compromising picture of him, meant to show the success of President Reagan’s War on Drugs campaign, was exhibited on the American TV.

Despite continuously chased by the DEA, the US Customs Border Patrol, and the FBI, the fearless and reckless pilot, known as ‘the crazy gringo who always delivers’, was always taken good care by the Medellin cartel, even when forced to cope with their own ways of dealing with annoying situations. This scenario was brought to our eyes when Seal’s unscrupulous brother-in-law, JB (Caleb Landry Jones), arrives at Seal's remote residence, strategically located in the quiet city of Mena, Arkansas, to stay and steal the family’s laundered money.

Doug Liman, mostly known for the "Bourne Identity" and "Edge of Tomorrow", directed from a tottering script by Gary Spinelli. He engages in a very active style that, sadly, also feels emotionally dried out, showing no space for big reflections. The narrative wasn’t always on the right track and some of the performances lacked the shine that would possibly elevate an interesting true story into a less flat fiction film.

The appropriate emulation of the looks and vibe of the 80s was one of the few beneficial aspects of a painfully vulnerable exercise whose lack of originality was exasperating. “American Made” might be able to entertain now and then, but it's just another vain attempt to squeeze the silly life of a scoundrel into two hours of a second-rate cinematic romp.