Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 team builds train to destroy it in ‘deadly’ stunt

The action sequence between Tom Cruise and Esai Morales was shot atop a real train going at close to 100 km/hour

Tom Cruise hanging off a moving train in Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning 1

The seventh instalment in the Mission Impossible franchise, Dead Reckoning Part 1, will release in theatres in less than a week on July 12. With Mission Impossible set to end with Part 2, the team has been going the extra mile to ensure that they give die-hard fans a thrilling movie viewing experience. Leading man Tom Cruise, who is known to do dangerous stunts by himself and pushes the ante with every new instalment of the series, has already given audiences glimpses of the mind-blowing action sequences he’s done this time. There’s the shot of him riding a motorbike off a cliff, speed-flying and driving for a car chase, while handcuffed to Hayley Atwell, among others.

The latest is a hand-to-hand combat sequence that he shot with Esai Morales atop an actual train that was barrelling down a track at nearly 100 km/hour. To shoot this in Norway, the team, according to director Christopher McQuairre, had to build an entire functional train that they could then destroy for the sequence. The shoot, he adds, was not only challenging to execute, but also to design all the different train cars and have it run on an actual railway track. “No one else in the world is doing this level of practical filmmaking and it may never be done again,” said Christopher, in a BTS video of the train stunt that the studio released recently.

Esai says, “I’ve done fight scenes, but to do one on a moving train is trial by fire; that’s how Tom likes to do things.” To which Hayley adds, “Tom’s not only fearless, but he’s also constantly looking how it’s going to land for the audience.”

The action between the actors was not the only difficult part of this shoot. The team also had to crash the train they’d painstakingly built and they had only one chance to get it right and capture it perfectly. “Everything you are seeing in this spectacular train sequence, is done to invest the audience in these characters. We can only do it with a team like this and an actor like Tom,” added Christopher.

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