I won't spoil a new Mission: Impossible, it's very good, and I expected nothing less since we're not only talking about the best Hollywood action franchise of the last two decades (rivaled only by John Wick), but - and here's the real specialness - the only Hollywood action franchise that, against the genre's natural tendency to break up, improves cinematically over the years.
So what I wanted to point out here, shortly after the film's press screening, is that M:I, especially in the period that Christopher McQuarrie has super-successfully taken over it (that is, from 2015 onwards, when it starts to improve dramatically movie after movie, it's that the franchise understands all too well the simple but often fleeting mechanisms that make a movie like this super effective.
One such mechanism is the likeability of secondary characters, a stable pillar that can be a make-or-break factor for a Hollywood action blockbuster, especially during the 80s when the template for the modern version of the genre was established, incorporating more buddy comedy and bromance plays elements in the camaraderie that Hollywood action has always had (the examples are too many for this).
In M:I, then, the function that the characters of Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg have is pivotal, and the franchise has made increasingly good use of the extra-narrative intimacy that the figures of the two actors evoke: the former because he was one of the most beloved supporting players of the Hollywood 90s that brought us up (not only Pulp Fiction and Jacob's Ladder but also classic "Star-movies" like Con Air and Entrapment), while the second because he is the biggest mascot of the British nerd comedy of the 21st century (Spaced, Cornetto trilogy, don't say the obvious).
Well, Dead Reckoning - Part One once again uses them very effectively, deepening their relationship with Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt, working more of the colleague-friend dynamic and offering some scenes of strong comedic timing and unexpectedly present emotion. In general, we should always have such.
