Don't be safe, be competent: Tom Cruise

During the principal photography on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Tom Cruise drove a motorbike off a purpose-built ramp on the side of Norway’s Helsetkopen mountain. Then he plunged 4000 feet into the ravine below before opening his parachute, barely 500 feet from the ground. When he landed, the crew members breathed a sigh of relief.

Then, Cruise picked himself up and did it all again another seven times, just to make sure the footage was perfect. Talking about the stunt, Tom Cruise says, “Every time I went off the ramp, it was dangerous. It was risking my life. We have a saying on Mission: Impossible movies, ‘Don’t be safe. Be competent’”.

The perfect example of Cruise’s constant quest for competency is his speedometer. He says, “I needed to be at a certain speed when I jumped off the ramp. But, the ramp was so narrow that if I looked down, I could come off it. So, I had to gauge the speed of the bike through the sound and vibration of the engine, and by feeling the molecules in the air over my body. That was the level of competency that I had to get to,” Mission: Impossible– Dead Reckoning Part One is all set to release on July 12 in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu