Mission: Impossible

The plot of this film is true to its title as Tom Cruise‘s Ethan Hunt has to save his reputation after he is accused by his CIA employers of being a mole. The film opens with a sting at ritzy reception reminiscent of True Lies (1994) which, unlike that film, goes wrong and his team (and a good number of the name cast) are wiped out.  Realizing that he’s been set up Hunt wants to avenge his colleagues but compounding the situation his bosses want to arrest him. So Ethan sets off on a mission to catch the bad guys and clear his name.

Cruise and his sister Paula Wagner produced this film and to their credit it is a neatly packaged vehicle for the former as an unstoppable protagonist who barely gets a bruise while tackling all manner of death-defying situations. Forget common sense however, Mission: Impossible is all about the ride and in this regard De Palma keeps the pace moving relentlessly with well staged action pieces and tongue-in-cheek humour in a film that manages to preserve a good deal of the spirit of the much-loved television series including preserving Lalo Schifrin's iconic original theme music whilst updating it for the internet age (in the first action sequence however, Hunt has to use a telephone box although cell-phones make an appearance later on) although the ease with which computer security systems are hacked are laughably simple (Estevez, then Ving Rhames, plays the obligatory master hacker).

One change to the television original is the prominence of Cruise as the cocky (but surprisingly sexless) All-American Hero.  No-one else really gets a look in although as always Jon Voight stands out (his best train work however was in 1985’s Runaway Train). The stunts are well-handled with one outstanding sequence set in a super-secure vault in CIA headquarters in Langley, VA (even a somewhat over-CGI’s climax involving the TGV and a helicopter somehow manages to work) and the story, by David Koepp and Steven Zaillian (Koepp and Robert Towne are credited with the scipt), keeps you on your toes.  All up Mission: Impossible is an entertaining action movie as long as you don't expect more of it than thrills and spills.

 

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