Bryan Appleyard

A stunning work of art: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One reviewed

Christopher McQuarrie has brilliantly refined and intensified the action-movie genre

Nobody does the generic hero character better: Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. ©2023 Paramount Pictures. All Right Reserved 
issue 15 July 2023

Blockbuster action movies are designed to stun the audience into submissive acceptance. Complexity, humanity, emotion and beauty are reduced to a few flickering lights in the swirling darkness of death and destruction. This is not a criticism. Great art has sometimes been like that and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is certainly art, though perhaps not great.

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