Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning is a spy thriller about Ethan Hunt hunting the two halves of a cruciform key that is tied to a rogue artificial intelligence. It opens when a new Russian stealth submarine is sunk after an artificial intelligence called the Entity takes control of its systems and turns on its own crew. Ethan, the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) agent played by Tom Cruise, is sent to find the two halves of the key. He recovers one half in the Empty Quarter desert and learns that the CIA director, Kittridge, has put a bounty on his former partner Ilsa Faust.

Back in Washington, Ethan has to deal with an intelligence chief named Denlinger, who wants the key for himself. Then, in Abu Dhabi, a skilled thief named Grace takes the key half from him, and that theft drags Ethan into a chase across Europe.

The full plot of Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning runs from a sunken submarine to a train falling into a gorge, and it ends without settling the Entity. The Russian submarine Sevastopol carries a new stealth system. The Entity, the artificial intelligence inside it, takes over, turns the crew against each other and sinks the vessel. Ethan Hunt later gets one half of the two part key from Ilsa Faust in the desert, and he fakes her death to shield her from the bounty.

In Washington, Ethan sits in on a briefing led by intelligence director Denlinger, and CIA chief Kittridge admits that he placed the bounty on Ilsa. In Abu Dhabi, the second key half turns out to be a fake, and the thief Grace steals the first half from Ethan. In Rome, Ethan frees Grace from police custody, and she slips away again. In Venice, the arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis holds the second half and had paid Grace to steal the first. At her party, Gabriel warns that he will take the key if Ilsa or Grace is killed, and then he kills Ilsa.

Luther urges Ethan to spare Gabriel so that he can be questioned, and the team boards the Orient Express. On the train, Gabriel kills the engine crew and sabotages the controls. Denlinger reveals that the Entity began as a cyber weapon built to test whether it could sabotage the Sevastopol, and that the joined key opens its source code. Gabriel kills Denlinger and goes after Paris. Grace picks the key from Kittridge, who is acting as the buyer, and Ethan parachutes onto the train. Gabriel gets the key and blows up a bridge ahead, so the train cars fall into the gorge. Ethan and Grace survive, and Paris dies after telling Ethan how the key connects to the Sevastopol. Ethan takes the key from Gabriel, escapes by speed wing and meets up with Benji.

Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One had its premiere on June 19, 2023, in Rome at the Auditorium Conciliazione. Cast and crew attended the Rome event, which came about three weeks before the film opened in theaters.

The theatrical release followed on a staggered schedule. It opened in the United States on July 12, 2023, in Australia on July 13 and in the United Kingdom on July 14. The film carries a PG-13 rating in the US, 12A in the UK and M in Australia. Rome also doubles as a setting, since the film stages a car chase through the city.

The ending of Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning is a cliffhanger by design: the train falls, the key changes hands, and the Entity is still loose. Gabriel blows up the bridge and the train plunges into the gorge. Ethan and Grace survive the wreck, but Paris dies after passing on what she knows about the key and the submarine. Ethan takes the key back from Gabriel, escapes by speed wing and meets Benji.

What does it all mean? In my opinion, the final act is built to leave two questions open. The first is how the joined key connects to the Sevastopol, since Paris dies at the exact moment she explains it. The second is what Ethan does with a source code key that every power in the story wants. Neither is answered in this film, which is why the title carries the words Part One.

It could be argued that this is the film's biggest risk. Ilsa's death and the sacrifice of Paris carry real weight, yet the audience leaves without a closing set piece that pays them off. That being said, the train sequence is the strongest argument for the structure: the parachute drop onto the train, the wreck in the gorge and the speed wing escape work as a complete action movie in their own right.

If you are asking whether there was a second part, there was. The story continues in Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning, released in 2025, and the Mission Impossible movies in order guide shows how to watch the two back to back.

Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning was filmed across Italy, Norway, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. Filming was set to begin in Venice in February 2020 under the working title Libra, but the COVID-19 pandemic halted production in Italy.

Rome supplied the car chase through the city streets. In Norway, the Hellesylt area hosted the motorcycle cliff jump. In Abu Dhabi, the production filmed inside the Midfield Terminal while it was still under construction.

Studio work was done at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden and at Longcross Studios in the UK. The train sequence drew on North Yorkshire, where Levisham was used, and the crash itself was shot at the Stoney Middleton quarry in the Peak District. A mockup locomotive was sent off a cliff there.

The production history of Dead Reckoning is as eventful as its plot, with a back to back plan, a pandemic and a locomotive pushed off a cliff.

• Tom Cruise announced on January 14, 2019 that the seventh and eighth films would be shot back to back under McQuarrie, and Paramount dropped that plan in February 2021.
• Filming was set to begin in Venice in February 2020 under the working title Libra, but the COVID-19 pandemic halted production in Italy.
• Production in Italy was suspended in October 2020 after 12 positive COVID-19 tests, and it resumed about a week later.
• The film was shot on Sony CineAlta Venice cameras, making it the first digital film in the franchise.
• For the motorcycle cliff jump in Norway, Cruise reportedly did more than 500 skydives and 13,000 motorcycle jumps in preparation, according to Today.
• The train wreck was filmed on August 20, 2021 at a quarry in Stoney Middleton in the Peak District, where a mockup locomotive was sent off a cliff.
• Principal photography wrapped in September 2021.

For the stunts across the saga, see Mission Impossible stunts, and for the films that came before, start with Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol.