The following story contains spoilers for Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.
IN THE 27 years of the Mission: Impossible franchise, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has always had two things: formidable villains and helpful sidekicks. From Sean Harris’ Solomon Lane and Jon Voight’s Jim Phelps to Simon Pegg’s Benji Dunn and Thandiwe Newton’s Nyah Nordoff-Hall, there have been no shortage of worthy people either helping Ethan or taking him head-on. Where the franchise has lacked, however, is in the category of good old fashioned henchmen. Let’s look at that other secret agent franchise for a few key examples: James Bond has come up against the likes of Jaws and Oddjob. Mission: Impossible, in this field, has come up empty.
Enter Dead Reckoning Part One, the seventh film in the franchise. Pom Klementieff, who audiences probably saw earlier in the summer as the warm and delightful empath Mantis in James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, shows up here as a character known only as Paris. She goes entirely the opposite direction, immediately bringing a mysterious form of violence and chaos into our heroes’ lives.
When Ethan and Grace (Hayley Atwell) attempt to get off the radar while driving a tiny yellow Fiat, Paris emerges in a police Hummer, ramming into them, laughing aloud and making expressions with her face that tell you one key thing: she’s going to be trouble for our heroes. It also goes a long way when Grace asks Ethan—who otherwise is always seemingly one step ahead of everyone else—who, exactly, Paris is. In one of the movie’s most memorable lines, he tells her: he has absolutely no idea.
Of course, this is a Mission: Impossible movie, so Ethan and Grace make it out of this intense car chase mostly unscathed. But that doesn’t mean Paris isn’t coming back for more. As it turns out, she’s the top henchman for the movie’s main human villain, Gabriel (Esai Morales). Gabriel has a violent past with Ethan that directly led to Ethan’s joining the IMF, and now has emerged as the human convoy for The Entity, the all-powerful A.I. system that serves as both a villain and Macguffin for the two parts of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning. Much like how Oddjob was silently throwing his razor-brimmed hat in Goldfinger at the behalf of that film’s titular villain, Paris shows up throughout the movie, swords blazing, for seemingly no reason other than the fact that she’s picked her side, and is committed to it.
Paris’ role in Dead Reckoning Part One marks the first time that a Mission: Impossible movie, really, has given one of those pure henchman something fun to do and really sink their teeth into (as opposed to, well, being easily disarmed by Ethan Hunt or Jeremy Renner’s William Brandt or whoever).
There are some other candidates—Jean Reno’s Krieger in the original Mission: Impossible isn’t bad, but doesn’t have the agency or bring the sheer chaos that Paris does. Others, like Lea Seydoux’s Sabine Moreau in Ghost Protocol or Billy Crudup’s John Musgrave in Mission: Impossible III are closer to secondary antagonists (operating with their own agendas apart from the main villain) than pure henchmen. Paris is purely, maniacally, in service of both Gabriel and The Entity. And just like Ethan tells Grace that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect his team, Paris is willing to do whatever it takes to assist hers.
Which is why Paris’ arc takes a particularly interesting turn in the movie’s third act. Just as Gabriel is facing off with both Grace and Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), Ethan has been tricked into a back alley fight with Paris. And while Grace makes it out alive, Gabriel takes Ilsa out (gone but not forgotten). Ethan, almost in parallel, has his chance to do the same with Paris—but lets her go. He won’t potentially create in someone else what Gabriel has created in him.
Paris remembers this, and Gabriel remembers this—and it’s why Gabriel tries to take her out aboard the train in the movie’s final sequence. And while Gabriel escapes and leaves Paris for dead, Paris survives, telling Ethan and company the most vital information in the entire movie. Plus, she presumably sets herself up to eventually make her own “choice” and join the IMF; someone as committed as her would be quite the asset to Ethan’s team.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about what Klementieff’s performance, thought, is that she essentially does it all without speaking. Cruise and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie have long been fans of silent films, and when talking about Dead Reckoning Part One, have specifically mentioned Buster Keaton’s The General. It’s clear that the physicality and slapstick in the movie are inspired by the types of things that silent film performers had to do with their bodies, and it’s also clear that Paris’ character—hell, she’s dressed as a mime for a major portion of the film!—is another tribute to an era of film that this movie’s star and director view extremely highly.
Paris isn’t entirely mute; we see at the end of the movie that she’s capable of communicating, but just chooses, for the most part, not to. But lines also don’t make a performance. There was some controversy in 2019 around Margot Robbie’s relative lack of dialogue in Once Upton a Time… In Hollywood, but that’s another case where she’s giving off far more in the facial expressions and physicality of what she’s doing than what could ever feasibly be granted in dialogue. The famous expression when it comes to writing is “show don’t tell”—we want to learn and understand things organically on our own terms, not be beaten over the head with explanations and themes.
If there’s a character who Paris could realistically be compared to, sticking in the action genre, it’s got to be Arnold Scwhwarzenegger‘s original Terminator. We’re talking someone who’s mere presence signifies violent trouble; someone who shows up in a scene and immediately tells you that things are about to get real intense, real fast.
And just like the Terminator, we suspect we could see Paris switching sides in the meantime, soon using that menacing intensity in a whole new way.
Evan is the culture editor for Men’s Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn’t.
