Mission Impossible 7 Reminds Viewers Tom Cruise Has a Sense of Humor
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1's surprising moments of humor remind audiences that Tom Cruise has a talent for comedy, not just action.
The trailers for the latest entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise have highlighted its action and adventure, but the movie has more to it than that. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One does everything fans of Tom Cruise's series expect, yet it's also a deceptively funny film. It has some genuinely big comedic turns and laugh-out-loud moments.
Many of them are set off by Cruise, who occasionally peels back the dramatic and serious layer to Ethan Hunt to play a befuddled and even overwhelmed agent trying his best to deal with the situations at hand. That keeps the film's largely unrelenting action from becoming overwhelming, and helps humanize the occasionally cold Ethan to audiences. More than anything, though, it serves as a good reminder that Cruise's extensive action experience comes with comedy chops that he should utilize more often.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One Embraces Comedy
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One carries a lot of the same tropes that have long defined the series. The film has all the car chases, fight scenes, and death-defying moments for Ethan Hunt that audiences are looking for. There are also some tragic beats concerning the death of an important teammate and the dangerous path Ethan's fury might force him upon. But the film has a surprisingly effective secret weapon in its arsenal: it's really funny.
At various points in the film, the perpetually confident Ethan finds himself undercut by a new turn of events, and Cruise plays the character with a confusion that is incredibly endearing. It gives Ethan a self-awareness of his situation that makes him actually relatable. Slapstick routines during a car chase add a bit of levity to the non-stop action, and help keep the audience from being bombarded with adrenaline to the point of exhaustion. Even some of Hunt's best moments come out of pure comedy. His dramatic last-second rescue of Grace isn't on purpose so much as him being blown into a train at the right minute to hilariously slam into the man about to kill her, leaving him initially taken aback by his own "heroic" move. Comedy gives the film some of its best moments, proving that Tom Cruise is really funny when he wants to be.
Dead Reckoning Highlights Tom Cruise's Talent for Comedy
As one of Hollywood's biggest stars for over four decades, Tom Cruise has played many different roles. But one of his most underutilized skills is a surprisingly keen sense of humor and a physicality that lends itself well to comedy. Cruise has a specific control over his motion and sharp awareness of movement that has no doubt helped him through years of Mission: Impossible stunts. But it's that same performative ability that gives Ethan's little freak-outs in Dead Reckoning their comedic value, as he's able to shift the character from ultra-confident to very worried and back again in an instant. His line delivery gives the film some of its biggest laughs.
It's worth remembering that Cruise first exploded on the scene with Risky Business, a comedy that leaned into his wiry youth to great effect. And he's has always been good at adding a little bit of silly charm to other genres, like his showboating in The Color of Money or the action-adventure Knight & Day. But one of his rare full-out comedic credits was in Tropic Thunder as Les Grossman, the movie exec with a hairpin trigger. The character worked largely through Cruise's performance, giving a portly jerk the gravitas of a world leader. That same talent is what makes the silly turns of Dead Reckoning Part One so much fun -- viewers are watching someone very good at comedy utilize the creative muscles he doesn't usually flex. While Cruise's action skills will likely get most of Dead Reckoning Part One's praise, he also deserves kudos for his comic tour de force.
To see Tom Cruise flex his surprisingly keen comedic muscles, check out Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, now playing in theaters.