Is the ‘Mission: Impossible’ Series Due for a Reckoning?

When did the “Mission: Impossible” films become action movies? I’m not sure when that happened, but I do know this much: For a series like the one in question, it’s live by the action, die by the action.

For a few days there, people were chattering about all the great action in “Dead Reckoning Part One,” talking up the Fiat car chase or that train-dangling-from-a-cliff climax as if we’d never seen a sequence like that one before.

But all I could think was, “Don’t we have the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise for all that?”For 27 years, the “Mission: Impossible” films have been dotted with great action.

That’s part of what these movies are.

In a funny way, though, it can’t be the essence of what they are.

Because then, no matter how spectacular Tom Cruise’s latest P.T.

Barnum feat of star-in-the-air stunt work…

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