Team FC
The AI makes it such that no digital information the characters receive can be trusted, planting a seed of suspicion that McQuarrie visually complements by cutting between both sides of the characters' faces as they talk, underlining that no one can be taken at face value.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One Movie is a looser, slower installment, which is a frankly insane thing to say about a film in which the countdown to disarm a bomb with a billion potential coded combinations is just a side quest, but this is also a movie that likes to linger
A shaky camera and almost-blinding light heighten the sense of disorientation that characterises a fight inside a cramped bylane. When Hunt rides his motorcycle off a cliff, McQuarrie lets the scene go completely silent for a few seconds – a bated breath before the sound design envelops the falling rider in a rush of wind.
At two hours, 43 minutes, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is a whole lot of movie, but the point at which it cuts off simultaneously creates the impression that part two isn’t enough to sustain its own film, and could’ve comfortably slotted itself into this one. The endgame that this film deprives viewers of is clear in the next one, which is a bit of a letdown.
The AI, dubbed The Entity, might know how all of this ends, as it repeatedly states, but for fans of a franchise that has navigated five directors and as many tonal shifts, the thrill has always lay in the unpredictability.
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