Henry Czerny

Henry Czerny's Kittridge sounds faintly bored by the information he is delivering in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023). His precise delivery keeps the complicated dialogue clear, without insisting that every detail deserves our amazement. We were amused by that boredom, because it made the film's prolonged explanations of an algorithm a little less solemn. This is where we value Czerny most: playing an official whose professional manner leaves us uncertain about how far to trust him.

That uncertainty was useful early on. Clear and Present Danger (1994) cast him as the duplicitous CIA deputy director Robert Ritter, and Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible (1996) gave him Kittridge, the man who calls Hunt a traitor. The parts helped establish him as a suspect authority figure, a casting habit that can make an actor's work seem decided before he has spoken. As the powerful patriarch Conrad Grayson in Revenge (2011–14), he continued to play someone used to exercising authority.

Christopher McQuarrie makes good use of that careful handling of dialogue when he brings Kittridge back. Czerny can explain the stakes clearly and still leave a question about the man explaining them, without making the speech difficult to follow. The weakness is how readily that skill can become an excuse for another briefing. Dead Reckoning Part One earns our recommendation through its action, especially the Rome chase; Czerny's presence makes the waiting more tolerable, but we still notice the wait.

In McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025), Czerny is the one man in a suit who seems to be enjoying himself. That small pleasure survives a film which spends an hour explaining the plot before either of its two major set pieces arrives. We would rather give him another exchange with Cruise than another page of explanation. Start with De Palma's Mission: Impossible, whose tense, ingenious complications are more consistently worth the trouble.