 |
| Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible 7, in which the villain will be an artificial intelligence, not a human |
Hollywood movie 'Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning', released on July 12, sees an unusual blend of technological innovation and tradition.
The villain in Mission Impossible 7 is also not a human but a sentient artificial intelligence called 'The Entity'.
But it's not artificial intelligence that threatens the jobs of hard-working people, as it's being said today, it's the villain who wants to dominate all the information in the world and have it at his fingertips.
In one of the opening scenes of the film, typists in a room are hastily transcribing data from intelligence agencies onto paper so that the villain 'The Entity' cannot read the information and keep the secret information out of his reach.
Apart from the great stunts in the film, scenes like this seem awfully plausible.
The film's director and co-writer Christopher Mack tries to explain that Mission Impossible 7 is not a story about the digital technology industry or computer viruses.
The film goes on to reveal that the only way to defeat the AI villain is a small metal key made of two pieces, which people hang around their necks on thin chains.
Despite all the initial concerns about an electronic super-mind (The Entity) bent on world conquest, the film also manages to decide the fate of humans in a series of pickpocketing, hand-wringing, fights, and a car-human collision. The second will result in a chase (ie it will have the traditional Mission Impossible scenes).
With this film, Tom Cruise and Christopher McKay pay sophisticated homage to the glamorous crime fiction popular in the fifties and sixties, a welcome choice at a time when we all have so much to worry about and There are many reasons and problems.
The film's release posters and trailers show a stunt in which Tom Cruise jumps off a cliff onto a motorcycle and then briefly freefalls before opening his parachute.
The stunt may not have been essential to the story of the film but it was nice to see Tom Kruzella, who is famous for such stunts, enjoying himself.
It was nice to see an old friend in this film as well. Henry Zerni played the role of 'Kateridge' as an 'Impossible Missions Force Officer in the first Mission Impossible film released in 1996. And now in the new film, he is back as the head of the whole operation.
In the film, Ethan Hunt assembles his usual crew, a confident computer expert (Ving Rhames), a nervous computer technician (Simon Pegg), and a dupe to the secret agency MI6, as Cartridge explains the whole situation. A giving agent (Rebecca Ferguson).
The team soon discovers that 'The Entity' is aided by a demonic Gabriel (Esai Morales) who is connected to Ethan's past. Gabriel has a sidekick, a ruthless assassin, played by Pom Klementieff.
And yes, there's also a pair of CI agents whose job it is to screw things up, whenever they get the chance.
It's an interesting group of characters, but the real fun of the film doesn't begin until all these characters start chasing each other around Abu Dhabi Airport.
There's also the scene where when Ethan is about to grab the key, Hayley Atwell, who plays 'Grace', outsmarts her and then manages to trick Ethan on multiple occasions. And this sequence helps in giving the movie a naughty mood.
At one point you'd think Grace had a flirtatious romance with Ethan, but Cruise is no Cary Grant.
Still, Cruise and Atwell's continued eye-rolling ensures that Mission Impossible 7 is a likable movie and you won't feel like it's a full three hours long.
Still, it is not comparable to 'Top Gun' and 'Maverick'. Despite all the delays in the film's release, and reports of its production going on during the Corona pandemic, it might not be the masterpiece we had hoped for.
Christopher Mack's favorite technique is to have multiple characters take turns saying a sentence, which makes his spells sound almost like dialogue, but not enough to fool anyone.
Another troubling problem is that much of the film feels too familiar. Like the previous two Mission Impossible films, directed by Christopher, this film uses stunts and locations that we have already seen in James Bond films.
And the worst part is that it uses stunts and locations that we have already seen in other movies besides James Bond.
In a scene where Ethan is chasing some people in the desert on horseback, the scene looks similar to a scene from the March-released film 'John Wick Chapter 4'.
And when it comes to the scene where the car comes crashing down in the Spanish seats in the room, the scene looks like a scene from the Fast X movie that was released in May.
Keeping in mind the films that inspired Cruise and Christopher Mack, it would have been more fitting if Ethan and Grace had they would have been wandering around the French Riviera instead.
But Christopher Mack may have saved this scene for 'Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part Two', which will be released next year.