With the exception of a uniquely slimy arms dealer played by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, the villains in the Mission: Impossible movies have always been rather serviceable, even forgettable. That is, if you’d even consider them the villains. Time, altitude, gravity, probability: These are the real threats facing Ethan Hunt, the Tom Cruise-shaped pinball launched through every exhilarating espionage machine in the series.
In Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, a sequel whose convoluted absurdity begins with the punctuation in its title, Hunt finally faces an enemy as intangible as the laws of nature he regularly defies. The Entity, as it’s called, is a sentient computer virus—a mass of malevolent code capable of hacking every database on the planet, and reshaping the world by redefining its notions of truth. It’s a timely foe for an age of invisible danger, disinformation, and AI anxiety. In its ability to predict and effectively control the future, it’s also a rather fitting adversary for Hunt. Has the living manifestation of destiny met his match in, well, the unliving master of it?
