Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

image for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

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Not suitable under 11; parental guidance to 13 (violence, themes)

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
  • a review of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 11 July 2023.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 11 Not suitable due to violence and themes.
Children aged 11–13 Parental guidance recommended due to violence and themes.
Children aged 14 and over Ok for this age group.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
Classification: M
Consumer advice lines: Action violence
Length: 163 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

When an Artificial Intelligence goes rogue – corrupting digital realities and military capabilities, and harvesting personal secrets enabling it to impersonate anyone and control pretty much any system on Earth – Ethan (Tom Cruise) is offered a mission to find his old friend Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), who is rumoured to have one half of a key that, together with the other half, is the only thing capable of controlling or destroying the artificial ‘entity’. Ilsa and Ethan work together as a global race for the keys unfolds. When Grace (Hayley Atwell), an unwitting thief, steals the key for a secret contractor, she has no idea what she has become involved in and repeatedly foils Ethan’s attempts to keep his mission on track. With the help of his good friends and technical wizards, Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames), Ethan tries to stay one step ahead of the entity who has a ghost from Ethan’s past called Gabriel (Esai Morales) working on its behalf. The entity will stop at nothing to achieve its purpose, creating chaos and confusion for humanity and bringing the world to the brink of war. Will Ethan and his team find both parts of the key and keep them from Gabriel or will the digital parasite infect all of cyberspace and allow one man to wield absolute power?

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Loss of Identity; World Domination; The perils of Artificial Intelligence; Violence as a means to solve conflict; Death of loved ones.

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some violence in this movie, including:

  • A submarine fires torpedoes at a threat that isn’t there. The deployed torpedoes hit the sub itself, causing a massive explosion, lots of destruction and the loss of human life. Numerous dead bodies are seen floating under the ice.
  • Ilsa is tracked by bounty hunters who attempt to kill her.
  • Bounty hunters shoot at Ethan, who shoots back, killing many in the process.
  • Isla shoots the bounty hunters and looks as if she is killed by them, but this later proves to be false.
  • Ethan deploys a strange gas bomb in a crowded room, rendering everyone, but one man, unconscious.
  • A man is shot with a tranquilizer.
  • A man is shot and killed in an airport lounge.
  • Grace steals a police car and smashes into the bounty hunters chasing her. She damages other cars and private property as she tries to escape and outrun them.
  • A motorcycle crashes into people and a man’s head is smashed through a window.
  • A character kicks a man in the head and steals a SUV, which is then driven into, over and through numerous things.
  • A small car crashes into a building and nearly crashes into a woman pushing a baby carriage down some steps during a high-speed chase through Rome.
  • Ethan is nearly hit and killed by a train as the car he is trapped in is stuck on the tracks.
  • Ethan punches a man in the face.
  • Grace fights off a couple of men, punching, shoving, hitting and kicking them.
  • Two characters attack Ethan in a narrow alleyway, bashing him with a bar as he tries to escape. Eventually he overpowers them both, leaving one unconscious and incapacitating but sparing the life of the other.
  • Grace tries to stab Gabriel but she is knocked unconscious during their struggle.
  • A character tries to strangle Ethan with her thighs but Ethan knocks her out, smashing her against a wall.
  • Ilsa fights Gabriel with a sword. They slash at each other but in the end Gabriel drives a knife through Ilsa’s chest.
  • Gabriel hits a man in the face with a shovel and throws him off a train. He then hits another man in the face with the shovel and hangs him by the neck over a pile of coal.
  • Grace shoots a character.
  • Gabriel slices through a man’s neck and a man shoots at Grace.
  • A character fights Gabriel and gets stabbed in the stomach.
  • Ethan blasts through the train window with his parachute and knocks out two men.
  • Gabriel tries to get Ethan off the train, stabbing at him with a knife as they cling to the side and fighting each other on the roof as they try not to get knocked off by overhead signals or tunnel entrances.
  • Gabriel causes a bridge to explode just as the train is approaching. Numerous carriages plummet into a ravine.
  • Ethan and Grace are nearly crushed by falling debris as they try to climb their way up the carriages.

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

  • Nothing further noted.

Product placement

The following products are displayed or used in this movie:

  • A Fiat Car was used and its logo clearly displayed.

Sexual references

  • None noted.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity and sexual activity in this movie, including:

  • Some very scantily clad dancers (both male and female) wear what appear to be skimpy bikinis as they dance on podiums at a party.

Use of substances

  • None noted.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

  • Damn it!
  • What the…?
  • There may have been one use of the term ‘fuck’ heard in the background of a scene at an airport.

In a nutshell

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is an action adventure and the seventh film in the Mission: Impossible series. Featuring an excellent cast, hair-raising stunts and a fast-paced plot, the film is best suited to older teen and mature audiences, particularly fans of the of the Mission: Impossible franchise.

The main messages from this movie are that our lives are equal to the sum of our choices; and that we cannot escape our pasts but that we have a chance to control our futures.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

  • Courage
  • Integrity
  • Loyalty
  • Helpfulness
  • Mercy.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

  • Trusting what they hear and see online.
  • Using violence or crime to get what you want.
  • Taking unnecessary risks.
  • Changing who you are to suit someone else.