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The tsunami that devastated the Pacific Basin in the winter of 2004 remains one of the worst natural disasters in history. Although I assumed its climax, as shown in Clint Eastwood ’s film “ Hereafter ” (2010), would never be surpassed, that was before I had seen “The Impossible.” Here is a searing film of human tragedy.

We were London in 2004 when the disaster struck, and later we sat mesmerized in Biarritz, watching the news on television. Again and again, the towering wall of water rose from the sea, tossing trucks, buses and its helpless victims aside. Surely this was a blow from hell.

The victims in Eastwood’s film beheld it afar on home video. In director Juan Antonio Bayona ’s “The Impossible,” they seem lost in it, engulfed by it, damned by it.

As “The Impossible” begins, all is quiet at a peaceful resort beach in Thailand. Seconds later, victims are swept up like matchsticks. The film is dominated by human figures: a young British couple, Maria and Henry Bennett ( Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor ), and their three young sons, Lucas, Simon and Thomas ( Tom Holland , Oaklee Pendergast and Samuel Joslin). All five fear they will never see their loved ones again.

In the earlier Eastwood film, they seem the victims of cruel destiny singling out a fate, perhaps foretold. In the Bayona film, have they been doomed by destiny? Seated in a dark theater, I reached out my hand for that of my wife’s. She and I had visited the same beach and discussed visiting it with our children and grandchildren. An icy finger ran slowly down our spines.

Such a connection can be terrifying. What does it mean? We are the playthings of the gods. As the film’s heroine, Naomi Watts powerfully becomes a front-runner for an Academy Award. Its eldest young hero, Lucas (Holland), separated from all, seeks tirelessly for fellow family members. How did anyone possibly survive? It takes a lot of courage for the little boy to bravely try to help others.

Spoilers follow, although the trailer and TV commercials reveal many of them. I’m happy I was blindsided by the story. We meet the Bennetts aboard a flight beginning their family holiday in Khao Lak, Thailand. We almost feel, rather than hear, a deeply alarming shift in the atmosphere. Something is fundamentally wrong. We see the tsunami from the tourists’ point of view. There is a shift in the universe, leaving behind a dazed group whose world is a jumble of destruction. They wander through the wreckage.

Maria is terrifyingly knocked through a glass wall and realizes she can see her son Lucas’ tiny head and body struggling to stay afloat in the surging flood waters. With indomitable strength and courage, she clings to debris, and they find themselves in a makeshift hospital that seems to have been somehow cobbled together. We realize she is the most seriously injured and begins to drift into and out of consciousness. She is a medical doctor and applies emergency first aid to herself.

Henry, tough and plucky, screams out the names of his two younger sons and loads them onto a truck bound for higher ground. The geographical layout miraculously seems halfway familiar to us after dozens of hours of cable news. All of those YouTube videos uploaded by strangers have been populated by characters we think of as people we know.

The film’s most dramatic sequences focus on Lucas, assigning himself the role of his mother’s lifeguard and protector. Now again, at another holiday season, this film becomes a powerful story of a family’s cohesive strength.

Director Juan Antonio Bayona and writer Sergio G. Sanchez combine visual effects in this film that are doubly effective because they strive to do their job without calling undue attention. It is a mark of great acting in a film when it succeeds in accomplishing what it must precisely when it is required. “The Impossible” is one of the best films of the year.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The Impossible (2012)

Rated PG-13 for intense realistic disaster sequences, including disturbing injury images and brief nudity

114 minutes

Naomi Watts as Maria

Ewan McGregor as Henry

Tom Holland as Lucas

Geraldine Chaplin as Old woman

Oaklee Pendergast as Simon

• Sergio G. Sanchez

Directed by

• Juan Antonio Bayona

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The Impossible – review

D espair, pain, panic and hope fight for supremacy in this outstandingly made and heartwrenching film, based on the true-life story of a Spanish family who went on a Christmas holiday in Thailand in 2004 and were caught up in the tsunami that hit south-east Asia, killing 230,000 people. With simplicity and conviction, it manages to be something other than a conventional disaster movie. The tsunami sequence itself is a masterly piece of film-making – and as for what follows, I have to admit to being blindsided by its real emotional power. This film is of course vulnerable to charges of manipulation, and of magnifying the western-tourist experience at the expense of the indigenous communities who lost everything. But in the end I found honesty and compassion in The Impossible. It could well be Ewan McGregor's finest hour, and there were long sections that I had to watch through a wobbly blur of tears.

It is directed by Juan Antonio Bayona and written by Sergio Sánchez, who collaborated on the excellent ghost story The Orphanage in 2007. The Spanish family has been turned into well-off Brits: Maria (Naomi Watts) and Henry (McGregor) and their three boys, Lucas (Tom Holland), Thomas (Samuel Joslin) and Simon (Oaklee Prendergast). They are a little stressed, a little smug, blandly accepting the luxury of their Thai holiday complex after a mild squabble over whether they would get exactly the beachside villa they had booked. Henry then broods over work emails on his smartphone, and Bayona and Sánchez plant a seed of doubt by making Maria's poolside reading a novel by Joseph Conrad. We don't see which, but it could be Typhoon.

Fans of The Orphanage will be on the lookout for touches of the unearthly or uncanny in the way premonitions of disaster are offered. Apart from Conrad, I could see only one: a strange, brief sequence in which we view the beach resort from the sea, as if from the point of view of that malign force about to destroy it.

The deluge itself is viscerally real and almost unwatchable. Clint Eastwood's 2010 movie Hereafter began with a similar scene, a reconstruction of the tsunami that was well made and certainly far superior to the rest of his film, on a similar subject. But Bayona's version is markedly better, created with colossal technical flair.

What The Impossible brings home is the simple agony and terror of being separated, a void which is worse than physical injury. In the chaos and devastation, the parents and children find themselves, variously, in different parts of this post-apocalyptic landscape. They wonder if their loved ones are dead, or about to be dead; they wonder if they themselves are going to die, if they would be better off dead, and if being dead is in fact what they will come to want more than anything.

Out of nowhere, McGregor delivers a performance with a sledgehammer emotional punch. Until the disaster struck, his Henry had been an identikit nice guy, a bland, somewhat self-satisfied tourist who fulfilled his parenting duties a little self-consciously. But at the low point of his despair, Henry has to borrow someone else's mobile phone and call his wife's father to tell him the situation. Simply having to enunciate what has happened overwhelms him with grief and fear, and he sounds just as much a scared little boy as any of his sons.

Watts's Maria is suffering her own torment in hospital, almost unconscious with a badly injured leg: Lucas – in a very decent performance from Holland – is anxiously watching over his mother, terrified that he will be separated from her, but at last takes a break and wanders around the hospital on a self-imposed mission to re-unite strangers with their lost children or partners. His altruism is rewarded with success, but then punished by a horribly ironic twist of fate.

And so The Impossible carries on, with some uncompromisingly big lachrymose moments and near-miss suspense scenes. The overhead shot showing dead bodies laid out with military organisation and precision nowhere visible in the shattered world of the living is a shock. This film is not especially complex, and not subtle, but there is judgment and intelligence in the simple idea of survival being the most agonising thing, and making survivor guilt the psychological aftershock of a shattering and irreparable blow.

• Drama films
• World cinema
• Ewan McGregor

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The Impossible submerges the true impact of the tsunami

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Ewan McGregor: 'The Impossible is my first film about being a parent'

The Impossible – review

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• DVD & Streaming

The Impossible

Content caution.

In Theaters

• December 21, 2012
• Naomi Watts as Maria Bennett; Ewan McGregor as Henry Bennett; Tom Holland as Lucas Bennett; Samuel Joslin as Thomas Bennett; Oaklee Pendergast as Simon Bennett

Home Release Date

• April 23, 2013
• Juan Antonio Bayona

Distributor

• Summit Entertainment

Movie Review

The Bennetts need a vacation. And while you may not think of a beach getaway in Thailand as the perfect setting for Christmas break, Henry is hoping it’ll prove to be a good choice.

He, his wife, Maria, and their three boys have been living in Japan for a while now, thanks to his job. But with a shake-up looming at the office, things could be changing in not-so-great ways. And eldest son Lucas has been going through that early teen angst period. So getting away and frolicking in the sun and surf for a week might just let them all unwind a little.

The first two days are great. The Khao Lak resort is brand-new and spotless. They spend Christmas Eve on the beach. They share great food that night. They launch floating lanterns into the evening breeze.

Christmas Day, just fabulous. Gifts. Laughter. More sunshine.

The 26th of December, however, starts off with a little something odd. A strange rumbling sound. The wind changes suddenly. The island birds start going crazy. What’s this all about? From their spots around the hotel pool everything looks fine.

But why are the palm trees shaking like that? Henry and the little ones stop their splashing in the wading pool and look up. Is that tree tumbling over sideways? Is the—

A 90-foot wave roars in from the ocean. It crests the pool area wall. And Henry and Maria both start screaming for the boys … just before everything is obliterated.

Positive Elements

The Bennetts are washed away, along with thousands of others on the island. They’re left battered and bloodied by the raging waters. The first of the clan we see pop up from the murky depths is Maria … and she immediately throws herself into danger to rescue Lucas, who she sees floating by on the surging tide. Then the two of them struggle to keep each other alive as they tumble and bob.

When they finally make it out of the debris-choked flow, Maria has sustained some pretty severe wounds. But despite her condition, she urges her son to help a young boy they hear crying from under some wreckage. Lucas refuses at first to risk being out in the open in case another wave hits. But Maria tells him that they must, “Even if it’s the last thing we do.”

Those panicked moments set up the story’s central self-sacrificial theme. We see scores of complete strangers doing whatever they can to help and comfort those in need. And the young boy’s rescue ultimately teaches Lucas a vital lesson about the value of life and sacrifice that impacts him deeply.

At one point in an overcrowded hospital, a suffering Maria urges Lucas to go out and help others rather than just sitting by her side. So he sets out to try to reconnect kids and their parents. Henry applies that same forward-driving self-sacrificial attitude in trying to find his lost family members. He refuses to stop looking even though it means putting himself in difficult and dangerous situations. He tells his young son, “The most scary bit for me was when I came up and I was all alone. And then I saw the two of you, I didn’t feel so scared anymore.”

Even before the incredibly destructive natural disaster hits, it’s evident that Henry and Maria love their boys dearly. Henry is always ready to roughhouse and play at a moment’s notice. And after the tsunami it’s clear that both parents would readily die to save their kids or each other. Their love and devotion is fully reciprocated: When Maria is hampered by her wounds, young Lucas strains to help her climb to safety. Even 7-year-old Thomas steps up to protect and comfort his younger sibling when they’re by themselves.

Spiritual Elements

The Bennetts enjoy Christmas morning together, though there’s no apparent connection to the spiritual side of the holiday.

Sexual Content

Always in nonsexual contexts we several times see Maria’s bare breasts. First it’s a brief side view as she’s dressing. Then, after the flood, she and Lucas are climbing out of the water and her tank top has been tattered by the buffeting debris, exposing her chest. Lucas quickly turns away, saying, “I can’t see you like this.” (The camera sees and then pulls away too.) A terribly embarrassed Maria ties her shirt together as best she can, and some women later offer her better covering. When they make it to the hospital a doctor starts cutting her clothing away to repair the massive wound on her chest, and again Lucas must turn away from his mother’s nakedness that moviegoers also see.

Lucas spots a fully nude man walking beside the road as the truck he’s riding in buzzes quickly by. (We can tell he’s naked, but the bouncing camera obscures the details.)

Before and after the tsunami, men and women wear various pieces of swimwear; some of the women have on bikinis. A stray joke alludes to hippies all sleeping in the same bed … “just like your old college days.”

Violent Content

The tsunami’s impact on the island is truly devastating, and the movie depicts it very realistically. People are tossed about and slammed into solid objects by the churning waters. Scores of dead bodies float underwater. More corpses lay facedown in the mud or along the side of the road. We see a pickup truck packed with corpses stacked like cord wood. Henry searches through body bag after body bag for his family.

In the hospital we’re shown hundreds of injured people. Some sport badly broken, torn and twisted limbs. The rooms are crammed full, many with the floors and walls splattered with blood and filth. A female patient vomits blood. And Maria gags on a long stringy object that she pulls from her throat.

That’s the least of Maria’s worries, though; her wounds are the most gruesome we see up close. When she finally rises out of the water with Lucas we can see a large gouge in her upper torso, along with numerous bloody scrapes and slashes over most of her body and face. One of her eyes is badly bruised and bloodied, and it nearly swells shut. A ripped open cut in her upper thigh shows that a slab of skin and muscle has been cut out and left dangling from the profusely bleeding wound. She wraps this injury with a dirty cloth and trails blood until she can no longer carry her own weight.

Later, in a flashback, we see how Maria received all that terrible damage as we watch the flood waters smash her through a glass wall and then tumble her savagely over and through flesh-tearing branches, broken masonry and other underwater debris.

Henry has quite a few scrapes, cuts and bruises as well, including a hemorrhaged pupil. We don’t see him get hurt, except for when he takes a crashing fall while searching for his wife. He then drags himself up from the offending hole, covered in blood. Henry and Maria both cry out in agony at times.

A car floats by, and we hear a screaming baby’s cry echo out from the vehicle’s interior. Long aerial camera shots reveal just how demolished the populated parts of the island are.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear “h-ll” three times in an emotionally overwhelming sequence when mother and son are reunited.

Drug and Alcohol Content

The Bennetts’ hotel room refrigerator is stocked with soda and beer. Henry and Maria talk of sharing a glass of wine after the kids go to bed.

What do you do when all the little expected things of life are ripped away from you? When the laptops and expensive shoes, sibling squabbles and job worries are all crushed beneath a tidal wave and your life is left hanging by a thread? What’s really important then? What do you reach for?

Those are the questions The Impossible —a movie based on a real family’s impossible struggles during the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004—asks and answers. And it does so quite powerfully.

It talks of an undying human spirit, showing us the fiece protectiveness complete strangers can muster for one another. The illustrates the unyielding care and loyalty a parent bestows upon a child, a husband upon a wife. It speaks of the purity of self-sacrifice, the anguish of loss and the strength of love.

The film’s raging tsunami special effects are flat-out stunning. The acting is utterly convincing. And the tense tale of scattered family members fighting to stay alive while desperately searching for nothing more than a reassuring touch of a loved one’s hand or a tearful comforting embrace, is immersive and very, very moving.

It’s also quite terrifying and wrenching. The realistic death, devastation, excruciating pain, bloody filth, and visceral glimpses of torn, naked flesh are difficult images to see—as they impart a life-affirming tale unlike so many others that surround it.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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The impossible, common sense media reviewers.

Very intense story of family's survival against the odds.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Ultimately, The Impossible is a story of a mother

Maria and Lucas do everything they can to help eac

The devastation the tsunami causes is catastrophic

Adults at the resort kiss and dance and embrace. T

Strong language includes a tween swearing. Words i

Grown-ups drink at the hotel bar and a dinner part

Parents need to know that The Impossible is an intense family drama set against the 2004 Asian tsunami. Because of the subject matter, there are many upsetting sequences, particularly in the first half hour after the tsunami hits. People are shown swept away and presumably killed by the rushing wall of water,…

Positive Messages

Ultimately, The Impossible is a story of a mother and son's devotion to each other after the unthinkable has happened. The movie reinforces the random way that natural disasters cause destruction. There's no reason some people survive and others perish; it's a terrible tragedy with unthinkable consequences. But throughout the calamity, people show each other extraordinary kindness and generosity, sending the message that even in times of despair, there are moments of hope and small miracles to celebrate.

Positive Role Models

Maria and Lucas do everything they can to help each other survive. There are several times when Lucas must act like the parent and take care of his mother. He even has to literally carry and hoist her up a tree. Although it's a burden, Maria convinces Lucas to save a little toddler boy they find.

Violence & Scariness

The devastation the tsunami causes is catastrophic. People are swept away in a wall of water, drowned or impaled or crushed by debris. Maria is seriously injured as her body makes impact in the rush of water. At one point, she's incredibly bloody and has a large flap of skin hanging off of her leg. People taken to the hospital are grieving the loss of their loved ones. Kids and teens will especially feel for Lucas, who at one point believes his mother is dead. Both Maria and Henry think the other has died. A tween yells at his mother a few times.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Adults at the resort kiss and dance and embrace. There's nudity, but in a completely asexual way. The mom, who was wearing a bathing suit when the tsunami struck, doesn't realize her breast is exposed until her son mentions it.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language includes a tween swearing. Words include "hell" and "goddamn."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Grown-ups drink at the hotel bar and a dinner party.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Impossible is an intense family drama set against the 2004 Asian tsunami. Because of the subject matter, there are many upsetting sequences, particularly in the first half hour after the tsunami hits. People are shown swept away and presumably killed by the rushing wall of water, and a mother is so severely injured that a part of her skin is no longer attached to her body. Parents, please know that you, too, will be affected by the horrors depicted in the film -- none greater than when a boy believes he's all that's left of his immediate family. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (20)
• Kids say (108)

Based on 20 parent reviews

So well done, but disappointed with the nudity(non-sexual)

Frighteningly realistic and sobering, yet uplifting, what's the story.

Based on the true story of a Spanish family that survived the 2004 Asian tsunami, THE IMPOSSIBLE follows Henry ( Ewan McGregor ) and Maria ( Naomi Watts ), a British couple who travels to a luxury resort in Thailand for a Christmas holiday. They have three kids: tween Lucas ( Tom Holland ) and two younger boys. On Dec. 26, 2004, as the family is playing poolside, the massive tsunami hits the area, sweeping thousands into the ocean. Maria survives the worst but is gravely injured. She finds her oldest, and together she and Lucas attempt to overcome each devastating moment.

Is It Any Good?

Movies about a massively destructive event, whether it's a war or 9/11, can be difficult to watch and even more difficult to make well. By focusing on one family, director Juan Antonio Bayona wisely distills the tsunami tragedy down to the myopic perspective of one distraught woman and her mature-beyond-his-years son. Watts and Holland's interactions beautifully capture the bond between mother and child.

Watts is terrific, and Holland is remarkable -- reminiscent of young Hunter McCracken in The Tree of Life . No longer a little boy but far from a man, Holland's Lucas is fiercely determined to survive and help his mother secure medical attention. Once they safely land at a Thai hospital, the story loses some of its immediacy, but then we find out what happened to the father and brothers thought lost. The Impossible isn't an easy viewing experience, but it reminds us all that even in times of despair, there are moments of hope and small miracles to celebrate.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about whether The Impossible is a disaster movie or not. How does the depiction of the tsunami compare to other films about catastrophes? Critics have said the movie's ending takes away from its powerful beginning. Do you agree?

What feelings do you have while watching this movie? Is it OK to feel happy for the main characters amid so much devastation?

Are cinematic deaths resulting from disasters or accidents different than those due to war or other forms of violence ?

The Impossible is based on a real family's true story. How accurate do you think it is? Why might filmmakers decide to change some details/facts? How could you find out more?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 21, 2012
• On DVD or streaming : April 23, 2013
• Cast : Ewan McGregor , Naomi Watts , Tom Holland
• Director : Juan Antonio Bayona
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Summit Entertainment
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : History
• Run time : 114 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : intense realistic disaster sequences, including disturbing injury images and brief nudity
• Last updated : January 18, 2024

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Movie Reviews

Reliving an 'impossible' catastrophe.

Jeannette Catsoulis

The Impossible is based on the true story of a family's brush with disaster while vacationing in the Pacific. Jose Haro/Summit Entertainment hide caption

The Impossible

• Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
• Genre: Drama
• Running time: 114 minutes

Rated PG-13 for intense realistic disaster sequences, including disturbing injury images and brief nudity

With: Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts

Watch A Clip

'Swept Everyone Away'

Credit: Summit Entertainment

Starring flying debris and surging walls of water, The Impossible takes the template of the old-timey disaster movie, strips it to the bone and pumps what's left up to 11.

Decades ago, perched in front of Earthquake and The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno , audiences were rewarded with thrills that depended on fleshed-out characters ( Steve McQueen as a fire chief!) and multiple interconnected storylines. How pampered we were.

Because this based-on-true-life tale of a Spanish family trapped in Thailand by the 2004 tsunami is much worse than a disaster: It's an ordeal. As punishing to watch as it must have been to film — especially for Naomi Watts, who absorbs most of the abuse — this sledgehammer of a picture never lets up. From start to finish, Watts' pale, slender body is pummeled, gored, pierced and raked over what looks like acres of saw grass and jagged detritus. Like James Franco in 127 Hours (an ordeal movie if ever there was one), Watts isn't so much battling the elements as battling the frailties of her own flesh.

Cycling through the late-night talk shows, Watts and her co-star, Ewan McGregor, have been extolling a slavish devotion to accuracy on the part of the film's Spanish director, Juan Antonio Bayona, and his screenwriter, Sergio G. Sanchez. It bears mentioning, however, that this precision has a very narrow focus, encouraging us to care only about a single (white, wealthy) family among the hundreds of thousands of (mostly poor, mostly brown) locals killed and maimed. For all the energy and ingenuity lavished on the project — the first to revolve around this century's greatest natural tragedy — you'd think there would have been room to explore the wider suffering.

Maria (Naomi Watts) and Lucas (Tom Holland) are ripped from their family by a tsunami. Jose Haro/Summit Entertainment hide caption

Maria (Naomi Watts) and Lucas (Tom Holland) are ripped from their family by a tsunami.

This microscopic approach may be economical, but it casts a pall of selfishness over events that might have read differently had the filmmakers exhibited a more universal compassion. (Those early disaster movies knew it was more humane, not just smarter filmmaking, to offer us a variety of victims.) So when businessman Henry Bennett (McGregor) dumps his two youngest sons with strangers while he hunts for his wife, Maria (Watts), and their oldest son, Lucas (a remarkable Tom Holland), he seems less the worried patriarch than a man accustomed to offloading inconveniences.

As it turns out, Henry is pretty much peripheral to the action anyway. From the moment the family, hours after arriving at a luxury beach resort, is separated by the mountainous tidal wave, he barely registers. Stuck on the fringes of the movie and squinting through a bad case of pinkeye, Henry and his quest are completely obliterated by the mother-son drama unfolding at its center.

And as Maria and Lucas make their slow, bloody way across a devastated landscape, her wide-open wounds are captured with almost sickening authenticity. Audience members have reportedly fainted during screenings, and it's not hard to see why; this isn't a film you want to experience after a heavy lunch.

Visually stunning but manipulative in the extreme — try not to roll your eyes as the various family members miss one another by inches — The Impossible nevertheless contains two of the year's best performances. Though presented as nothing more than a survival machine, Watts snags our sympathy through subtle shifts in expression and tone.

And young Holland (just 13 when he joined the production in 2009) is a marvel: When Lucas, after losing his mother in the chaos of a crowded hospital, finds her being prepped for emergency surgery, his angry relief is the film's most touching moment.

Unfortunately it's followed by one of the funniest. "Think of something nice," advises a nurse as she places an anesthesia mask over Maria's face. Like maybe a beach vacation?

Movie review: ‘The Impossible’ has the right touch with real horror

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So terrifying is the 2004 tsunami as imagined in “The Impossible,” its destructive force engulfing the screen with such violent menace, that the imagery alone elicits a rising dread so intense you may feel yourself gasping for breath.

Spanish-born director J.A. Bayona must have been tempted to let the monstrous waves triggered by the Indian Ocean earthquake that devastated South East Asia and left hundreds of thousands dead overwhelm the dramatic story he tells.

That never happens in this profoundly moving film inspired by the real-life experience of the Alvarez Belon family on that fateful December day. Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor star as Maria and Henry, on holiday with their three boys at a Thailand beach resort, and the film introduces gifted young Tom Holland as the couple’s oldest son Lucas.

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Bayona achieves a rare sense of balance between the big and the powerful as well as the small and the intimate in the family’s survival against impossible odds, no doubt the inspiration for the title. Their situation was heartbreaking, their courage in the face of it humbling. It is the kind of ode to the human spirit that you hope comes along, and not just during the holiday season.

One surprise is that it took a horror auteur to pull off such a grounded film without letting the tsunami, or the sentiment, get out of control, although he had an abundance of both in Sergio G. Sanchez’s screenplay. You could argue that “The Impossible” could have benefited from more nuance in the dialogue, but that flaw only slightly dims the power of the film.

As the movie opens, Maria and Henry are on a turbulent flight with their boys, Lucas, Thomas (Samuel Joslin) and Simon (Oaklee Pendergast). A smooth landing and 24 hours later, the Christmas presents dispensed and wrapping paper crumpled on the floor, they head to the pool. Bayona uses that brief calm before the tsunami to do more than introduce us to the people whose journey we will follow.

In a handful of scenes, the director lays the framework for the way in which he will use sight and sound to define their experience. The deafening roar of the jet engines, the glassy ocean underneath it, the eerie silence that thickens in the moments before the tsunami hits, and the muffled screams of Maria when it does, are beyond even what Bayona achieved in his petrifying Cannes Film Festival debut a few years ago. “The Orphanage,” also written by Sanchez, was a far more traditional genre film, though the director’s understanding of the fear that comes with the loss of control — those moments when forces beyond you take over your fate — very much infiltrated that film too.

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For his second feature film, Bayona has significantly refined the sensory sensibilities, working once again with cinematographer Oscar Faura, whose impressive background includes other unsparing examinations of the human condition, notably 2010’s “Biutiful,” with Javier Bardem, and 2004’s “The Machinist,” with Christian Bale. You believe it when the filmmakers say the eight or so minutes of the tidal wave that we see on screen was a year in preparation and a month in shooting the special and visual effects veterans Felix Berges and Pau Costa created.

Like the experience of the family separated by the tsunami, the narrative is split between Maria and Lucas’ journey and Henry’s with the two younger boys, though the mother and son arc dominates. In the panic that overtakes Maria when she surfaces to a vast churn of water and debris, alone, no sight of her family or anyone else, the odds of survival are laid out. When she spots Lucas struggling in the current, the clash between incredible hope and absolute fear surfaces. Both those emotions carry the film.

Soon it becomes clear that coming out alive is no guarantee of survival. Maria’s injuries are grave and in that moment when Lucas sees a gaping wound and whispers “Mama,” the boy becomes a man. The many ways in which Lucas is forced to grow up in just a matter of days, and Maria’s instinctive understanding that to come out of this intact she must find a way to guide her son’s choices even as she lies near death, is the real heart of the movie. Holland and Watts’ onscreen bond is one of the most poignant aspects of the film.

As is always the case in disasters like these, the road to help is paved by the care and generosity of strangers, and the movie is filled with the many small acts of kindness extended to the family along the way. The villagers who rip off a door to carry Maria, the man who lends Henry his cell phone despite the precious minutes of battery life he will lose.

Henry spends the hours after the tsunami walking through the devastation screaming Maria and Lucas’ names, McGregor channeling such grief in every labored step. Soon he is forced to trust his 5- and 7-year-old boys to others so they can go to the safety of the hills as his search for the rest of the family continues.

Miles away in an over-crowded hospital, Maria faces multiple surgeries in the crudest of circumstances. The scope of the damage and the difficult realities are woven in. Pick-up trucks carrying bodies, the makeshift message boards with names of the missing, aid workers trying to keep up with the unending string of injuries, the parentless children, the childless parents, random family photos covered in mud, final notes left behind, houses reduced to matchstick heaps, and the growing field of bodies in bags become the backdrop. It was a fine line to walk to show the extent of the disaster and its human cost without making the moments feel like exploitation. The filmmakers have handled it with a sensitivity that is respectful of the loss.

Though many people will know the ending before they walk into the theater, that doesn’t make “The Impossible” any less affecting. For it is in the details — the many ways in which fate and circumstance intervened, and what survival required of each member of the Alvarez Belon family — that you find the far better story.

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Movie Review – The Impossible (2012)

January 8, 2013 by admin

The Impossible , 2012.

Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona. Starring Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor and Tom Holland.

During a holiday in Thailand, a family find themselves caught up in one of the worst natural catastrophes of our time.

As a cinematic achievement, The Impossible does so many things right it’s very hard to fault it. Human tragedy and true story dramas can so often overwhelm their audience in sentimentality and manipulated emotion that the story suffers and we are all-too-aware of the filmmaker’s intent, but in the hands of director Juan Antonio Bayona the audience are sucked into that terrible tsunami in Thailand in 2004 and we never leave until the credits roll.

At a modest €30 million budget, the film uses CGI which is more effective than any $200 million comic book blockbuster and the scale and devastation of what the tsunami caused is recreated as if it were news footage. The tsunami scene leaves you stunned, only imagining what you’d do if you were in the same situation, full of fear despite being safe in your cinema seat. As the lead character, we see Naomi Watts and her son being swept away, literally clinging for life to a tree, and then the real trauma begins; the only scene of 2012 which made me exclaim out loud was when Bayona casually shows the gaping wound in Watts’ leg as if it’s a graze. The revelation could have been so over wrought but the realism is what makes the film such a success throughout.

Naomi Watts gives everything she’s got as the mother and is never anything less than captivating in a physical and emotional performance that matches anything on screen in 2012 and is a truly Oscar-worthy in every sense of the term. As her husband, Ewan McGregor displays the kind of acting range he’s shown on too few occasions but he doesn’t put a foot wrong in The Impossible and neither do the child actors who play their three sons. So often a child actor can seriously damage a film’s quality ( Looper being a perfect example) but on display here is young talent at its finest.

The simply story of the film (tsunami hits, family separates, family reunites) is another winning element; no sub-plots, no plot twists, no comic relief, no cop-out ending, just a simple story executed perfectly and endlessly watchable with an acting tour-de-force at the centre. It’s hard to find fault with The Impossible and very easy to appreciate the filmmaking prowess. It’s hard to watch at times, but missing it would be the real disaster.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Rohan Morbey

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Movie Review: The Impossible (2012)

• Aaron Leggo
• Movie Reviews
• 4 responses
• --> January 23, 2013

Surviving the impact.

Cinematic sentimental gestures don’t come much more desperately inspirational than the slow motion shot of a person reaching skyward with a swelling score accompanying their ascent. In his syrupy drama The Impossible , director J.A. Bayona reserves this moment for the third act, but it’s not like the sentimentality sneaks up on us. This kind of exaggerated emotion is in the movie’s DNA right from the start, when some onscreen text reminding us of the 2004 tsunami lingers on the words “true story,” guaranteeing that we can’t ignore the dramatic importance of the impending narrative. Before we see a single frame of footage, the movie already hits a suggestively syrupy chord.

Introducing us to Maria (Naomi Watts), Henry (Ewan McGregor) and their three sons Lucas (Tom Holland), Thomas (Samuel Joslin) and Simon (Oaklee Pendergast) in a stilted scene of worried banter aboard a plane doesn’t help secure that sense of realism that Bayona desires, but before long, we’re on the ground and Bayona is fully invested in foreshadowing. The vacationing family are shown around the Thai resort that they’re staying at and the tour of the place is solely focused on how amazing and new and wonderful and lovely and relaxing this place is. Hmm . . . I think I hear a wave coming to prove you wrong, bellhop.

Even after they settle in, Maria, Henry, and the kids share a few moments together, but Bayona’s camera keeps drifting off to solemnly stare out at the ocean. Building suspense is one thing, but constantly reminding us of the imminent disaster that we know is on its way just feels obnoxious. At the very least, it’s dramatically inert. It seems as though Bayona doesn’t want to miss a clichéd beat, so eager is he to lend every scene, every moment a touch of gooey resonance. But when he gets to the tsunami sequence quite early on, he manages to mix surging horror with the sentimental flourishes that he seemingly can’t resist.

This particular sequence still takes stops along the way to get in touch with its sappy side (close-ups of hands reaching for each other, the nearly muted soundtrack that depicts a character’s disorienting experience), but the overall effect is undeniably frightening and intense. We see the water topple tall palm trees before it smashes into the resort, engulfing everything. Bayona hurls us into the powerful pull of the water with Maria, who clings to a tree in a claustrophobically tight shot that soon switches to a higher, wider angle to reveal the sheer immensity of the surging water and the emptiness of its surface.

This pair of juxtaposed shots, the individual in close-up and then the individual as a small piece in a vast wasteland, is a favorite visual motif of Bayona’s. It soon becomes tired and obvious, but he does manage to conjure some impactful moments during the disaster sequence. Convincingly capturing the hellish horror of underwater obstacles that threaten to impale at a moment’s notice, Bayona, cinematographer Óscar Faura and the astonishing effects team turn the roiling, muddy sea into a treacherous enigma that maliciously hides its greatest threats just below the surface. The nightmare of the wave eventually subsides, but it’s left many a mark on Maria, her body badly torn up from her nasty journey.

Along the way, Maria soon reconnects with Lucas, while we later catch up with Henry and their other two boys. With the water no longer flowing, Bayona turns to sap and quickly embraces his freedom to explore the story’s sentimentality with an arsenal of weepy clichés. A phone call home isn’t just about the emotion of the onscreen caller, but also the looks on the faces of other sad survivors and the encouragement to revisit the phone call for maximum dramatic effect. Meanwhile, Lucas’s search for something to do in a crowded Thai hospital leads to him running around and recording the names of missing loved ones currently sought by ailing patients. He then runs around some more while yelling out their names, hoping to reconnect two separated souls. In Bayona’s hands, this act of good samaritanism is wringed of its dramatic potential and reduced to one more shamelessly sentimental distractions.

The perfect vacation.

Such is the case with most of The Impossible , post-tsunami landfall. This is a supposedly impossible tale of a severed family finding each other again across a greatly devastated divide, so the potential for sappiness is clearly high. But the potential for quiet, contemplative drama is also present. Bayona simply seems so enamored with the cinematic familiarity of recycled sentimentality that he’s willing to settle for empty emotions. When it comes time for a metaphor about the “beautiful mystery” of dead or dying stars to rear its ugly head, it’s clear that the movie has crossed the syrupy point of no return.

Oddly enough, while the performances are all compliant with the sentimentality, each actor feeding it in their own way, the acting itself is more of a highlight than a detriment. Watts is quite good in a demanding and punishing role that leaves her either floating through debris or clinging to life in a hospital bed. The sudden change from a physically active role to an inactive one gives her interestingly opposing shades of experience to work with. The kids are all pretty decent, with each of them managing to be relatively believable in the context of a harrowing journey. McGregor is the weakest link and the most susceptible to the sap, but for all the bad scenes he has, he still convinces as a downtrodden dad.

None of the performances are able to elevate the material of The Impossible above the syrupy space where Bayona has anchored it and that is the insurmountable problem. For everything the movie gets right, either in relatively commendable performances or absolutely phenomenal makeup effects, it can’t rise up from its modest ambitions to tackle the truth of its story with dramatically fortified focus. The movie is seemingly always searching for a cliché it hasn’t already dragged through the mud. And while he does the dragging with gusto, Bayona seems only capable of cheapening the drama. After all, he’s clearly just waiting to reveal that skyward thrust he practically promises the whole way through. The force with which he tugs at our heartstrings rivals that of the tsunami. This is a tidal wave of treacle, eager to unleash a flood of tears. Well, will you settle for an eyeroll?

Tagged: disaster , Thailand , tsunami , vacation

You and I both know the truth. You just don't admit it.

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'Movie Review: The Impossible (2012)' have 4 comments

January 23, 2013 @ 9:40 am ivan

this movie sucked

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January 23, 2013 @ 12:23 pm DroneStrike

Not my kind of movie..

January 23, 2013 @ 1:03 pm BovineMagus

Water ain’t no joke. Force feeding drama unecessarily is.

January 23, 2013 @ 6:29 pm Tigress

If there is an award for the most intense natural disaster recreated for film, it would go to “The Impossible”.

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‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One’ Review: Still Running

In this franchise’s seventh entry, Tom Cruise’s mission includes increasingly improbable leaps, chases and stunts. Luckily for us, he chooses to accept it.

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By Manohla Dargis

I don’t know if anyone has ever clocked whether Tom Cruise is faster than a speeding bullet. The guy has legs, and guts. His sprints into the near-void have defined and sustained his stardom, becoming his singular superpower. He racks up more miles in “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” the seventh entry in a 27-year-old franchise that repeatedly affirms a movie truism. That is, there are few sights more cinematic than a human being outracing danger and even death onscreen — it’s the ultimate wish fulfillment!

Much remains the same in this latest adventure, including the series’ reliable entertainment quotient and Cruise’s stamina. Once again, he plays Ethan Hunt, the leader of a hush-hush American spy agency, the Impossible Mission Force. Alongside a rotating roster of beautiful kick-ass women (most recently Rebecca Ferguson and Vanessa Kirby) and loyal handymen (Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames), Ethan has been sprinting, flying, diving and speed-racing across the globe while battling enemy agents, rogue operatives, garden-variety terrorists and armies of minions. Along the way, he has regularly delivered a number of stomach-churning wows, like jumping out a window and climbing the world’s tallest building .

This time, the villain is the very au courant artificial intelligence, here called the Entity. The whole thing is complicated, as these stories tend to be, with stakes as catastrophic as recent news headlines have trumpeted. Or, as an open letter signed by 350 A.I. authorities put it last month: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.” In the face of such calamity, who you gonna call? Analog Man, that’s who, a.k.a. Mr. Hunt, who receives his usual mysterious directives that, this time, have been recorded on a cassette tape, an amusing touch for a movie about the threat poised to the material world by a godlike digital power.

That’s all fine and good, even if the most memorable villain proves to be a Harley Quinn-esque agent of chaos, Paris (Pom Klementieff), who races after Ethan in a Hummer and seems ready to spin off into her own franchise. She tries flattening him during a seamlessly choreographed chase sequence in Rome — the stunt coordinator, Wade Eastwood, is also a racecar driver — that mixes excellent wheel skills with scares, laughs, thoughtful geometry and precision timing. At one point, Ethan ends up behind the wheel while handcuffed to a new love interest, Grace (Hayley Atwell, another welcome addition), driving and drifting, flirting and burning rubber in what is effectively the action-movie equivalent of a sex scene.

Despite the new faces, there are, unsurprisingly, no real surprises in “Dead Reckoning Part One,” which features a number of dependably showstopping stunts, hits every narrative beat hard and, shrewdly, has just enough winking humor to keep the whole thing from sagging into self-seriousness. This is the third movie in the series that Cruise and the director Christopher McQuarrie have made together, and they have settled into a mutually beneficial groove. On his end, McQuarrie has assembled a fully loaded blockbuster machine that briskly recaps the series’ foundational parameters, adds the requisite twists and, most importantly, showcases his star. For his part, Cruise has once again cranked the superspy dial up to 11.

Over the years, McQuarrie has loosened up the star, who generally seems to be having a pretty good time. Still, it must be exhausting to be Tom Cruise, who famously performs his own stunts. A smattering of creases now radiate around his smile, but time doesn’t seem to have slowed his relentless roll. The most arresting set piece here finds Ethan smoothly sailing off a cliff via a motorbike and a parachute. Improbable, yes? Impossible? Nah. Like the other large-scale, stunt-driven sequences, this showy leap at once underscores Cruise’s skills and reminds you that a real person in a real location on a real motorbike did this lunatic stunt.

Nothing if not a classicist, Ethan also goes one to one with a baddie (Esai Morales) atop a speeding train, perhaps in homage to his cliffhanger moves on another train in the first “ Mission: Impossible ” (1996). In his review, the New York Times critic Stephen Holden observed that with this film Cruise had “found the perfect superhero character.” It’s worth noting that, in 1996, the top 10 movies released in the United States were largely high-concept thrillers and comedies; in 2022, half the top 10 releases were from Marvel or DC. Yet the film that connected most strongly with audiences was Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick.”

Although “Maverick” featured plenty of digital whiz-bangery, its most spectacular draw of course was Cruise, who has also remained the single greatest attraction in the “Mission” movies. To that point, while there’s little of substance that I remember about the first film other than it was directed by Brian De Palma, I can vividly picture — with the crystalline recall that only some movies instill — two distinct images of Cruise-Ethan from it. In one, he races away from a tsunami of water and shattered glass; in the second, he hovers inches above a gleaming white floor, his black-clad body stretched head to toe in a near-perfect horizontal line. The filmmakers imprinted those images on my memory; so did Cruise.

Early in the “Mission: Impossible” series, the outlandishness of the movies’ plots and Cruise’s equally fantastical stunts started to make him seem less than human. By the second movie, I wondered if he were disappearing altogether, turning himself into little more than a special effect. Since then, the plots and the stunts have remained impossibly absurd, sometimes enjoyably so, as here. Yet over the years, the series has unexpectedly made Cruise seem more poignantly human than he has sometimes seemed elsewhere. One reason is that the “Mission” movies were instrumental in shifting the locus of his star persona from his easygoing smile — the toothy gleam of “Risky Business” and “Jerry Maguire” — to his hardworking body.

The obvious effort that Cruise puts into his “Mission” stunts and the physical punishment he endures to execute them — signaled by his grimaces and popping muscles — have had a salutary impact on that persona, as has the naked ferocity with which he’s held onto stardom. It’s touching. It’s also difficult to imagine any actor today starting out in a superhero flick reaching a commensurate fame, not only because the movies, Hollywood’s at least, no longer retain the hold on the popular imagination that they once did, but also because the corporately branded superhero suit will always be more important than whoever wears it. Tom Cruise doesn’t need a suit; he was, after all, built for speed. He just needs to keep running.

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One Rated PG-13 for thriller violence. Running time: 2 hours 43 minutes. In theaters.

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic of The Times, which she joined in 2004. She has an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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All Mission: Impossible Movies, Ranked By Tomatometer

“Hey, Tom. Paramount here. Yes, the studio. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to create a new summer franchise out of a 30-year-old TV show, and have it virtually improve with each sequel over 20 years…”

And so Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt has halo-jumped, rock-climbed, motorcycle-duelled, and face mask-revealed his way across dozens of countries to unravel all manner of world threats in the Mission: Impossible movies. He’s had help along the way, featuring a cast of series veterans, like Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg, and occasional players like Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton. Hunt hasn’t had too much help from the IMF, though, considering how many times they think their star employee has gone rogue.

A trademark for most of Mission: Impossible ‘s lifespan was bringing in a new director for each entry, ranging from John Woo to Brad Bird to Brian De Palma, giving each entry a unique spin. But Since Rogue Nation , Cruise (who also produces) has found a perfect collaborator in Christopher McQuarrie. He was the first to direct two M:I s in a row, with Fallout raking in the series’ best box office and critical marks. And McQuarrie is directing the next two films: Dead Reckoning – Part One releases this Friday, with Part Two  out June 28, 2024.

Before we see what death-defying hijinks they get into next (we don’t think Ethan’s been to the moon yet), we’re ranking all Mission: Impossible movies by Tomatometer! — Alex Vo

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) 96%

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) 97%

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (2015) 94%

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) 93%

Mission: Impossible III (2006) 71%

Mission: Impossible (1996) 66%

Mission: Impossible II (2000) 56%

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Screen Rant

Mission: impossible 8 - release date, story & everything we know about dead reckoning part 2.

The Mission: Impossible 8 release date is set for 2025, and there's intense speculation on what's next for Ethan Hunt after Dead Reckoning Part One.

Quick Links

The latest mission: impossible 8 news, mission: impossible 8 release date, mission: impossible 8 cast, mission: impossible 8 story details.

• Mission: Impossible 8 - Further News & Info
• Mission: Impossible 8 , picking up from Dead Reckoning Part One 's cliffhanger, promises to be the most dangerous mission yet for Ethan Hunt and his team. The suspense is high as fans eagerly anticipate the thrilling twists and turns of the franchise.
• The release date for Mission: Impossible 8 has been pushed back to May 23, 2025, and the title will no longer be Dead Reckoning Part Two . Changes in production and a year-long delay suggest significant adjustments are being made to the highly anticipated film.
• Despite setbacks, Mission: Impossible 8 is confirmed and production is ongoing. Returning cast members, such as Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames, will be joined by new additions. The storyline remains shrouded in secrecy, leaving fans eager for more details.

Mission: Impossible 8 will pick up from the dramatic cliffhanger left by Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One , and it could be the most dangerous mission of them all. Story details about what was originally titled Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two are still mostly under wraps, and there’s been a lot of speculation about what star Tom Cruise could do to top the incredible feats he's achieved playing IMF agent Ethan Hunt. Since the franchise has already been a rollercoaster of twists, turns, and belief-defying action, expectations for Mission: Impossible 8 are high.

When it arrives in 2025 Mission: Impossible 8 will find Ethan Hunt in a precarious position. Dead Reckoning Part One story saw Ethan and his loyal IMF team chasing after a foe from Ethan's past and a rogue A.I. dubbed "The Entity." Dead Reckoning Part One ends on a cliffhanger with one of Ethan's team dead and a desperate race to find and destroy The Entity before other interested parties can obtain it. The stakes have never been higher for Tom Cruise's super-spy, and the next Mission: Impossible movie is already one of the most eagerly anticipated in the franchise so far.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 Review - Near-Perfect Summer Blockbuster

Bts footage from london.

As the movie continues its lengthy production process, the latest news comes in the form of Mission: Impossible 8 BTS footage . Continuing to film major scenes in London, new footage released on YouTube by user UnBoxPHD shows Cruise and co-star Simon Pegg shooting a scene in which they embrace and enter a crowd of protesters near Trafalgar Square . The context of the scene is unknown at this time, but it is the second major BTS clip released as the movie continues to shoot in the English capital.

Ethan Hunt Returns In May 2025

This will be 29 years after the release of the original Mission: Impossible , ranking it among the longest-running action franchises ever

The Mission: Impossible 8 release date is May 23, 2025 . The premiere was previously set for June 2024 but was pushed back by almost a year by Paramount. This will be 29 years after the release of the original Mission: Impossible , ranking it among the longest-running action franchises ever. Like Dead Reckoning Part One and the preceding two Mission: Impossible movies, Mission: Impossible 8 will be written and directed by Cruise’s long-time collaborator Christopher McQuarrie.

Stream Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One on Paramount+

Cruise Returns As Ethan Hunt

The cast of Mission: Impossible 8 contains many returning names from the cast of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One . Tom Cruise is once again returning as international superspy Ethan Hunt . Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames will also return as Benji and Luther respectively, two of Hunt’s closest friends and most trusted advisors. Other returning cast members of Mission: Impossible 8 include Vanessa Kirby as The White Widow, and Esai Morales as the new villain Gabriel, a shadowy figure from Ethan's past.

Despite Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One ending with assassin Paris being badly wounded, Pom Klementieff is confirmed to return for the Mission: Impossible 8 cast. Rolf Saxon will return to the franchise for Mission: Impossible 8 , reprising his role as CIA analyst William Donloe from the 1996 original. Donloe was last seen being demoted by Henry Czerny's Kittridge — who will also return for M:I 8 — and reassigned to a polar substation in Alaska for the Langley mess.

The entire known cast includes:

Which Actors Return In Mission: Impossible 8 - Cast Guide

The hunt for the sunken submarine continues.

Specifics are being kept under wraps, but there are already some hints at what the Mission: Impossible 8 plot will be. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One ends when Ethan manages to recover the key to The Entity's chamber that everyone is seeking. The issue is that this chamber is located inside the wreck of a Russian submarine dubbed the Sevastopol, and while Ethan's mission is to destroy the rogue A.I., many other nations are trying to recover and potentially weaponize it.

Hunt and his team have no idea where the submarine is, so finding the sunken Sevastopol will likely take up part of Mission: Impossible 8's story . The movie formerly titled Dead Reckoning Part Two will have to answer some other lingering mysteries. There's the question of who exactly was Marie (Mariela Garriga) and what her relationship was with Ethan. Gabriel is shown killing Marie right in front of Ethan in a flashback set 30 years prior, which spurred Ethan to join the IMF.

Other unanswered questions the Mission: Impossible 8 story needs to address include where Luther (Ving Rhames) disappeared with the hard drive containing a piece of the villainous A.I., and why exactly is Jasper Briggs' (Shea Whigham) so intent on bringing in Hunt. The fact his surname is the same as Dan Briggs — the founder and first leader of the IMF team in the original Mission: Impossible TV series — could be a clue in itself.

Mission: Impossible 8

Mission: Impossible 8 is the direct sequel to Dead Reckoning - Part One and is the eighth film in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Said to be the final film, Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and more will reprise their roles in Ethan Hunt's IMF team as they face off against a dangerous foe from their past.

Mission: Impossible 8 - Further News & Info

• Mission: Impossible 8 Director Teases Return Of Henry Cavill’s Villain
• Tom Cruise Rides Upside Down Airplane Wing In Mission: Impossible 8 Stunt Photos
• Mission Impossible 8's Dead Reckoning Villain Return Teased By Star: "Hard To Kill!"
• Major Mission Impossible 8 Story Detail Has Already Been Spoiled In An Unexpected Way
• Tom Cruise Films Action Scene In Set Photos From New Movie (Is It Mission: Impossible 8?)
• Mission: Impossible 8 Delayed To 2025, Will Change Dead Reckoning Part 2 Title
• Mission Impossible 8 Set Photos & Video Show Tom Cruise Bloodied & Running

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Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Where to watch.

Watch Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One with a subscription on Paramount+, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

With world-threatening stakes and epic set pieces to match that massive title, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One proves this is still a franchise you should choose to accept.

With a terrific cast and some beautifully shot stunts, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One might be the best action movie of the year.

Audience Reviews

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Christopher McQuarrie

Hayley Atwell

Ving Rhames

Luther Stickell

Rebecca Ferguson

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Mauli's Impossible Love Story

• Episode aired May 2, 2024

Rahul's girlfriend, Rati, comes to Ujjain from London to meet him and his family. Rahul's parents want to finalize his and Rati's marriage as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Karan feels conflic... Read all Rahul's girlfriend, Rati, comes to Ujjain from London to meet him and his family. Rahul's parents want to finalize his and Rati's marriage as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Karan feels conflicted after leaving his family for Manisha's sake. Rahul's girlfriend, Rati, comes to Ujjain from London to meet him and his family. Rahul's parents want to finalize his and Rati's marriage as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Karan feels conflicted after leaving his family for Manisha's sake.

• Shruti Anand
• Shehzad Shaikh
• Sushmita Singh
• Rahul Agarwal
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• May 2, 2024 (India)
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 23 minutes

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