If you just left the cinema after watching Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, and are wondering what other films you could watch while waiting for Part 2, we got you covered. Here are 10 movies to watch If you loved Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1.
Source Code (2011)
A film with a train sequence and some very evolved, strange AI? That’s not only Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, but also Source Code. In this Duncan Jones film, Jake Gyllenhaal plays former U.S. Army Captain Colter Stevens, who has been on a train to Chicago where a bomb has been detonated.
Through a repeated simulation in an AI, Stevens is able to repeat his trip until he finds the culprit. The movie is very different from Mission: Impossible, but it’s still thrilling and adds a Groundhog Day quality to the mystery, making it an exciting film that uses the train setting incredibly well.
The Other Mission: Impossible Movies
If you’re looking for some franchise to scratch your Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 itch, nothing better than the rest of the Mission: Impossible films. Every one of Ethan Hunt’s adventures has something to offer (even Mission: Impossible II), and it will be the best way to track how the character played by Tom Cruise evolves, and becomes more and more crazy in his stunts with each movie.
It’s also a fun way to see how every director put their own stamp on their films (Brian De Palma and JJ Abrams couldn’t be more different in their directorial styles), and how many famous actors have spent some time in the franchise.
Salt (2010)
Salt was the culmination of Angelina Jolie, the action star. She plays Evelyn Salt, a highly-skilled CIA operative who is accused of being a Russian agent. This movie has as much action and stunts as any Mission: Impossible movie, making Salt as much a one-woman army as Ethan Hunt is in his films. Funnily enough, the role was first offered to Cruise, who declined before Jolie took it and asked to change nothing in the script to indicate the character was now a woman.
About the action in the film, Jolie told Cinema Blend: “And it was him really trying to figure out, okay, if she’s going to go up against a guy who’s a foot and a half taller than her and a hundred pounds heavier than her, how could she actually do it? She’s faster, she can get height, she can jump on things, or she’s quicker, or she’s more agile, or whatever it would be. ”
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)
Kingsman: The Secret Service and the Mission: Impossible films have many things in common; a reluctant hero that gets into a death-defying mission, an agency no one knows about, some gadgets, and a great villain.
In this movie, we see something never explored in the Tom Cruise films, how our hero was trained and becomes so good at his job, as we watch Eggsy’s (Taron Egerton) training under the strict eye of Harry Hart (Colin Firth). These films have incredible fight scenes, a much more dark sense of humor, and more violence than the Mission: Impossible movies, making for a different, if still thrilling, watch.
James Bond Films
The Mission: Impossible films (and any action/spy movie) have a debt to the James Bond movies. Cruise's movies have some homages to stunts Bond already pulled, but making them even more difficult, like the jump off the mountain with the parachute (The Spy Who Loved Me), fighting on top of a moving train (Skyfall), and hanging on to the side of a plane (Octopussy).
This latest Mission: Impossible also has a great, charismatic, scary henchman in Paris (Pom Klementieff), as many Bond films did with Jaws (Richard Kiel) or Oddjob (Harold Sakata).
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a fun spy film where a CIA operative named Solo (Henry Cavill), and a KGB agent named Ilya (Armie Hammer) have to work together with Gaby (Alicia Vikander) to avoid a nuclear disaster. This movie is a good Mission: Impossible substitute for many reasons; for one, it was supposed to star Ethan Hunt himself as Solo, before he had to decline the project, and it was the movie that made Cruise and McQuarrie want to work with Cavill, as he’s smooth as charismatic (so much so, that it was his perfect audition to show how he could be the new James Bond).
On why he did the film, director Guy Ritchie told Coming Soon: “I remember how I wanted to capture the tone and the fun of the TV series without overthinking it. Within 10 seconds, I thought, “Oh yeah. I remember that. I remember the fun of it. Now let’s try and capture the fun of it.”
Atomic Blonde (2017)
A kick-ass lead actor in a film where she can’t trust anyone but herself and her abilities sound kind of like a Mission: Impossible movie, but in this case, it’s Atomic Blonde, led by Charlize Theron. The Tom Cruise films always have incredible stunts where the actor puts his life on the line, in this film, Theron had to train extensively to be able to do the hand-to-hand combat, including a long one-take where she fights with many goons without a cut.
The director, David Leitch, also did Bullet Train, another film that could be used as an Ethan Hunt substitute as it has a star (Brad Pitt), and action in a train. If you’ve ever wondered how a Mission: Impossible film would’ve been during the '80s and with the Berlin Wall still up, this movie might be the answer.
Collateral (2004)
Paramount Pictures
If after watching Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 you’re looking for a movie where Cruise is still lethal and very good at his job, but want a different kind of flavor, Collateral is the film for you, as the actor plays the bad guy. Directed by the great Michael Mann (Heat), this movie is a two-hander between Cruise and Jamie Foxx, who plays a cab driver with the bad fortune of picking up Tom Cruise’s Vincent on the night he has to kill five people.
It’s fun to see our Ethan Hunt actor, being such a bad guy, and effortlessly evil, in what could be a version of what would’ve happened if Hunt had fallen to the dark side, as both Walker (Henry Cavill) and Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) tried to make him in some of the Mission: Impossible movies.
Jack Reacher (2012)
Jack Reacher proved Tom Cruise could be a bruiser action star, as he gave more punches in that film than in most Mission: Impossible movies combined. The actor’s casting made some noise from the fans, as in the books he is described as much taller and bigger, but Cruise still makes you believe he can kick everyone’s ass. The film also has Werner Herzog as the bad guy, which is always a plus.
Jack Reacher was the first collaboration with Christopher McQuarrie at the helm and Cruise as the star; a combination that has been repeated in the last three Mission: Impossible films, including Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1. The director had already worked with the star re-writing his movies before, but this is the first time he directs him, and the actor left with such a good impression that tapped him to do Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Bourne Franchise
The Bourne franchise might be the best if you need something to fill your Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 void. It has action, compelling characters, efficient adversaries, and even the original small car being chased by the police through the streets of a city sequence that happened in The Bourne Identity, but also because just as Ethan Hunt is, Jason Bourne is on a mission, and he won’t stop.
The first film is still a classic, but the whole franchise is worth a watch as it changed how action scenes, and especially fighting, were shot, something that has been used in all kinds of movies since, including in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Even though Matt Damon is no Tom Cruise, he also gives an incredible performance as the titular character, and the plots are as twist-and-turn as in Ethan Hunt’s movies, making for the perfect tetralogy to watch. This franchise also tried the idea of having Jeremey Renner take over as the action star, without actually working, making it even closer to the Mission: Impossible world.