'Mission: Impossible' Is Funnier Than Ever. Here’s Why.

The following story contains light spoilers for Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.

DURING AN otherwise mundane moment of Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) going through his spy gear early in 1996’s original Mission: Impossible film, his IMF (the Impossible Mission Force, not to be confused with the International Monetary Fund) teammate Jack (Emilio Estevez) explains that an unassuming piece of gum is actually an explosive device—one that’s armed by mashing the two sides together. “Just don’t chew it,” Jack sardonically (and darkly) remarks.

Humor is core to the Mission: Impossible franchise, but those tonal moments of brevity have increased under the stewardship of writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, who did rewrites on 2011’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol and took over as writer and director for 2015’s Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation. He hasn’t relinquished control since, helming a total of three Mission: Impossible films (with a fourth on the way). And he’s hinted that he and Cruise are nowhere near done.

McQuarrie’s got a great penchant for infusing moments of comedy—physical or otherwise—into his Mission films that help make the otherwise world-ending stakes of the plot feel less oppressive. To wit, moments after Hunt nearly dies in Rogue Nation, he botches sliding over a car, which prompts Benji (Simon Pegg) to question how fit he is to drive. With the release of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, they’ve reached a new level of theatricality, with certain moments playing out like a live-action installment of Looney Tunes.

It’s not just in the dialogue this time around—although one of the most effective jokes in the movie is a “Who’s On First?” riff on the IMF’s namesake—but in many of Part One’s tenser moments or even its action-heavy setpieces. The opening setpiece, set inside the Midfield Terminal at Abu Dhabi International Airport, features fellow IMF agents trying to track down Ethan via security camera footage, only to be foiled at every turn thanks to Luther (Ving Rhames) hacking the feed and doing some imagery trickery. That leads to slapstick moments like Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham) trying to pull a man’s face off to ensure it’s not Ethan underneath. The grace note of the Abu Dhabi sequence is Jasper’s exasperated declaration that Ethan’s “gotta be here somewhere!” only for Ethan to sprint by on an elevated walkway in the background, in a hilarious bit of framing.

But the real bit of Looney Tunes logic comes into the film’s big car sequence. Set in Rome as Ethan and Grace (Hayley Atwell) try to outrun the Roman police, Briggs, and the villainous Paris (Pom Klementieff), the chase peaks with the duo inside a Tweedy Bird yellow-colored Fiat 500. Small, quick, and uneasy to drive, the car careens, slides, and bumps around the cobblestones like a golden retriever puppy learning to chase a ball for the first time. Subsequent elements play out in hilarious fashion: it’s not enough to have Hunt drive a Fiat—as he and Grace are handcuffed together, forcing him to drive one-handed through the cobblestones and in-between cars. As they end up on the famed Spanish Steps, a botched move sends the car spiraling down the stairs—and concludes with Grace in the driver’s seat; her attempts to drive the car go in circles, literally, as a baffled Paris stares on from the interior of her honking APV—the black hue of which evokes that of Sylvester the Cat. As Paris stalks her prey through the streets of Rome, the comparisons draw themselves.

It’s not uncommon to see a hat on a hat get added into bits of dialogue to punch it up, but infusing that level of legitimate slapstick humor in an action sequence, especially one as meticulously crafted as this, is a rarer and trickier feat.

McQuarrie recently told Letterboxd that he and Cruise view Buster Keaton’s work—specifically 1926’s The General—as the source material for their work on Part One. That film includes a sequence wherein Keaton rides a push cart off a track (pratfalling him off the back comedically) and a train crashing off a bridge into the water below. But The General serves more than an inspiration for setpieces; Keaton’s history as the preeminent stuntman of his day and the dangers he faced in doing those stunts sounds... an awful lot like Cruise’s approach to filmmaking over the last years. If there’s anyone fit to take up Keaton’s mantle in our modern era, it’s Cruise—who continues to put audience enjoyment ahead of his own personal safety for the sake of a good stunt. What’s old is often new again, and few movies make it feel as bold and fresh—or as funny—as Dead Reckoning Part One.

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