Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning I

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The seventh part of the Mission: Impossible series, with which Tom Cruise made the step to producer in 1996, looks very much as if the success story of the much-maligned but undeniably most lucrative Hollywood player of the last thirty years will continue. The threat scenario has been adapted to the latest fashionable theme: An artificial intelligence is infiltrating secret services around the globe, all world powers are trying to get their hands on its source code, a blonde arms dealer also wants to capitalise on the situation, and a chief villain named like Archangel Gabriel is about to pose as the personal envoy of the digital new world spirit. In short: another case for secret agent Ethan Hunt and his buddies from the CIA's Mission Impossible group, which officially does not exist. Of course, Hunt's now considerable backstory gets in the way in the form of old adversaries and companions, and of course a new beauty shows up in the form of a hyper-cool pickpocket whom Hunt wants to bring on board, but strangely never into his bed. The game of all against all is so complicated that the film occasionally takes a break to explain to the characters and to us who is in league with whom. As if that would matter in view of the usual stupendous chases and duels, which are more systematically interspersed with a dash of comedy than before. The highlights: a showdown between Cinquecento and Hummer in Rome, with Hunt and his partner steering their cart in handcuffs as an inventive duet, and, of course, the breathtaking finale, in which a train plunges wagon by wagon into the abyss and the heroic duo constantly fight the vertical. These two scenes alone are worth the ticket.