MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE  – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE is another well-produced entry in this high-octane franchise starring Tom Cruise as IMF spy Ethan Hunt, in a story where Ethan must protect his team, including his romantic partner and a resourceful female thief, from a super-powerful Artificial Intelligence entity and its vicious nihilistic henchman intent on controlling the world. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE is a superlative spy thriller, with gripping action and a strong allegorical Christian message that “the Cross of Christ holds the key for defeating evil,” but it has lots of intense action violence and some foul language, including four strong profanities.

The movie begins with a Russian sub testing a new advanced, computerized stealth device under the Arctic ice. Things go wrong when the tech develops a strange computer bug that causes one of sub’s own torpedoes to go haywire and sink the sub.

It turns out that a powerful Artificial Intelligence entity hacked the double cross-shaped key, called a Cruciform key, that opens the lock to the sub’s new high-tech stealth device and controls it. The entity also has hacked nearly all the world’s digital tech but is lying dormant until it’s ready to take over everything some day in the near future. Happily, though, it’s not yet hacked into all the major countries’ intelligence apparatus, including America’s. So, all the major intelligence agencies are frantically trying to transfer everything to analog systems that the entity can’t touch.

Also happily, the two parts of the Cruciform key floated to the surface in the spring on the dead bodies of two Russian officers commanding the sub’s crew. When combined, the two parts will give a person access to the entity’s source code to shut it down, or control it. The two parts of the double-cross key go missing, but Ethan’s lover, Ilsa, has managed to steal one of the two parts. Someone put a bounty on her head, but Ethan helps her fight off a bunch of bounty hunters in the Arabian desert in Yemen. She gives Ethan the half of the key, and he tells her to pretend to be dead and hide away, to protect herself.

Ethan doesn’t turn in the half of the key to his boss, Eugene Kittridge, head of the Impossible Missions Force. However, Kittridge orders him to find the second half of the key and turn both halves into him. Kittridge says he wants the United States to control the key, which would give it access to the “source code” of the AI entity and be able to control the powerful but evil entity. Ethan, though, says he will use the source code to destroy the entity.

Ethan and his team, which includes Luther and Benji, go after the second half. They discover that their old friend, the female gangster called “The White Widow” because of her platinum blonde hair, is having a courier deliver the second half to her in Venice. There, she plans on selling the half to the highest bidder. The bidder could be one of the major nations, including the United States, or a super-rich criminal. Ethan also learns that an old nemesis, a ruthless nihilistic assassin named Gabriel, is after the second half. Ethan also learns Gabriel is actually working for the evil entity, but Gabriel secretly wants to obtain both halves of the Cruciform key so that he can control the entity through its source code.

There’s a fly in the ointment, however. A beautiful female thief, calling herself Grace, is trying to obtain the White Widow’s second half of the key, though she has no idea what it does and what it’s really worth. She too wants to sell it to the highest bidder.

Also, Kittridge has ordered an elite military team to follow Ethan and stop him from getting both halves of the key, finding the source code and destroying the entity.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE isn’t totally perfect, but it doesn’t disappoint in delivering the goods when it comes to high-stakes action and suspense, not to mention colorful characters and situations. Even better, it tells a gripping story of good versus evil. In fact, it has a strong allegorical Christian worldview with the metaphorical theme that, “The Cross of Christ holds the key to defeat or destroy evil.” Also, the hero, played by Tom Cruise, has a strong moral code that highly values life and hates evil.

That said, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE has lots of intense action violence, including murder by the ruthless human villain. There’s also lots of foul language, including one “f” word and four strong profanities linking God with a “d” obscenity. A suggestive dance scene also occurs. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for mature viewers, including teenagers and adults.

A word about the idea of an Artificial Intelligence system becoming sentient. MOVIEGUIDE® doesn’t believe this is actually possible, because are the ones who program and control these systems. Thus, an Artificial Intelligence system, including a robot with an AI system, can only do what it’s programmed to do. It can’t become sentient and go against its programming. However, MOVIEGUIDE® does believe that a malevolent person or a group of malevolent people can create and control a malicious AI system to commit deeds of mass destruction or even take global control of major technology, including, perhaps, all nuclear bombs. In effect, the mass media in the United States already does some of this today, however, because it controls and spews up much of the information and group-think that reaches 50% or more of the people. And, the mass media has accomplished this without using a super-powerful Artificial Intelligence system, simply with the help of powerful automatic pre-programmed algorithms. The danger with AI is that it will give the mass media tyrants, working with tyrannical government leaders, even more power to control everyone and destroy their enemies.