MIssion: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Already Certified Fresh With High Rating on Rotten Tomatoes

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read the reviews for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. The first reactions to the film are praising the seventh installment in the long-running franchise as an exhilarating adrenaline rush — and the best movie of the summer. This year’s box office has lagged behind expectations with tepid tentpoles like The Flash and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but it seems Tom Cruise — who flew Top Gun: Maverick to nearly $1.5 billion at the global box office last summer — has done it again with Mission: Impossible 7. 

Hours after the first reviews landed on Rotten Tomatoes, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One scored a 98% approval from critics to receive the “certified fresh” designation. That’s not only a franchise-best Tomatometer score, but the 98% from more than 100 reviews makes M:I7 one of the best-reviewed movies of 2023, topping the acclaimed Past Lives (97%), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (96%), John Wick: Chapter 4 (94%), Sisu (94%), Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (90%), and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (82%).

According to critics, Dead Reckoning tops 2018’s Fallout (97%), 2015’s Rogue Nation (94%), 2011’s Ghost Protocol (93%), 2006’s M:I III (71%), 1996’s original Mission: Impossible (67%), and 2000’s M:I 2 — the sole “rotten” at a franchise-low 56%. See a sampling of reviews below.

TheWrap: “With jaw-dropping set pieces and a pulsating sound design,director Christopher McQuarrie delivers one of this summer’s besttheatrical events… What better mission couldthere be this summer other than witnessing our perpetual cinematicmaverick deliver yet another full-scale cinematic experience? Should youchoose to accept it, of course.”

EW: “While the title might feel unwieldy, the film itself is anything but, its nearly three-hour running time passing as quickly as it takes a message to self-destruct … as always, it’s the action sequences, Cruise’s death-wish level stunts, and chemistry of the core ensemble that will keep audiences strapped in for the adrenaline ride.”

Deadline: “The climactic bike flight is part of a rugged and notably cinematicclimactic train journey on what’s meant to be the Orient Express, asequence that, like so much else in the film, is familiar in itsessential components but is pushed to an unprecedented degree of risk.Makers of spectacle and adventure films mostly feel the need to come upwith something new to top anything that’s come before, and the creativeteam here has done that and more. This is a serious, sharp-minded and top-tier action film by anystandard, and many fans will no doubt mollify themselves by seeing itmore than once before Part Two opens a year from now. This is Hollywoodaction filmmaking at its peak.”

USA Today: “The seventh M:I is chock-full of gloriously bonkers stunt sequences, fresh and familiar faces alike, and Cruise running (usually literally) from one international locale to the next … you don’t come to Mission: Impossible movies for sensical plots − you come to watch Cruise cheat death in stunts that would make most normal people go, ‘Nah, I’m good.’ One bit in particular has him riding a motorbike off an insanely high cliff leading into a mind-blowing BASE jump.”

Variety: “The action builds to the film’s best set-piece, as Hunt finds a novelway to board a speeding train — and an even more unconventional way todisembark once it starts sliding off a bridge, one car at a time. Thisouting may be one-half of a two-part finale, but it gives audiencesenough closure to stand on its own, and every reason to expect the lastinstallment will be a corker.”

The Hollywood Reporter: “The strong cast, high-gloss production values and constant wow factor of the action offer plenty of distraction from the storytelling deficiencies. And the fact that Gabriel (Esai Morales) aims to wound Ethan by harming the people he cares about gives the film a few genuine emotional moments, even if McQuarrie seldom lingers long over them.”

The Guardian: This outrageously enjoyable spectacle has compelled my awestruck assent with its sheer stamina, scale and brio … In the past I have been agnostic and a nay-sayerabout M:I, but the pure fun involved in this film, its silly-seriousalchemy, and the way the franchise seems to strain at something crazilybigger with every film, as opposed to just winding down, is something towonder at.”

The official logline: “In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team embark on their most dangerousmission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all ofhumanity before it falls into the wrong hands. With control of thefuture and the fate of the world at stake, and dark forces from Ethan’spast closing in, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by amysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan is forced to consider that nothingcan matter more than his mission — not even the lives of those hecares about most.”

Starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Shea Whigham, and Cary Elwes, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is playing only in theaters July 12th.