Movie Review – Mission: Impossible

Mission: Impossible (1996)
Written by David Koepp, Robert Towne, and Steven Zallizan
Directed by Brian De Palma

There is a formula. At the time of this writing, I have watched five of the six currently released Mission Impossible films, and there is most definitely a list of things that have become expected for nearly every installment. That said, each film (up to Rogue Nation) has its own director and a distinct style, which sets it apart from much of the copy/paste nature of its contemporaries, like Marvel movies, where the directors are made to suppress their style to be, well, bland, I suppose. I don’t think the MI films are a boon to cinema, but they do feel like something completely different from what we are served today.

In the 1990s, turning Boomer television shows into movies to satiate nostalgia was the standard. What made Mission Impossible different was that Brian De Palma was brought in as director. De Palma was a well-established director responsible for helming films like Carrie, Blow Out, Scarface, The Untouchables, and more. He brought some gravitas to the picture while still being a director who wasn’t considered an art-house filmmaker. That was a smart move because De Palma exercises restraint throughout MI. This is a sharp, tightly written & directed spy thriller that stands up today because of how much they held back.

The IMF (Impossible Mission Force) is a secretive branch of America’s intelligence orgs. One of their teams, led by Jim Phelps (Jon Voigt), has been sent to Prague to stop a rogue agent from stealing a list of the CIA’s undercover agents. The mission goes south, and only Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) remains alive. IMF knows someone on the inside is working to sell them out, and because Hunt survives, all fingers point at him. As with almost all of these movies, Hunt has to go out on his own, be disavowed by the agency, and assemble a team of people to help him reveal the truth. In this film, Hunt slowly peels back the layers of an onion until uncovering who betrayed his team and stopping the sale of the undercover agents list.

Things you will almost always see in a Mission Impossible movie: someone or multiple people will dramatically pull off an insanely realistic mask, Ethan Hunt will hang on a cable or wire as part of a break-in the team must do, Tom Cruise will be shot from the side running down a street, the enemy will always be disassociated from any specific nation, Hunt’s team will often have to steal the thing the bad guy wants as part of their ruse in gaining the bad guy’s trust, the IMF will have a different secretary in every film (Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Fishburne, Tom Wilkinson, and more), there is always an Inspector Javert figure who is intent on chasing down Ethan Hunt, there is always a mole or traitor that must be uncovered, Hunt will also always be hanging precariously off of something, and a mission will be delivered on a device that self-destructs. I am sure I have missed more, but this is generally the list of ingredients you will find in an MI picture. Some do them better than others, but these were never things that I disliked about the movies.

I was fifteen when Mission: Impossible first came out, and right away, I really enjoyed the vibes of the movie. This was my third or fourth viewing, and everything De Palma brings to the table still holds up. The film has a potent atmosphere from the start, and the director is skilled at playing into mystery. It’s no secret that De Palma is a massive fan of Hitchcock to the point he’s been accused of blatantly ripping off the late filmmaker. While MI never reaches the heights of Hitchcock espionage films, it is still entertaining from start to finish. It clocks in at just under two hours yet still delivers exciting tension-filled set pieces and a complete arc for Ethan Hunt and the villains.

With the recent box office returns of summer 2023 proving less than stellar, this might be a lesson that we don’t need a grotesquely long explosion of spectacle. You can tell a solid story in 90 minutes or maybe a little more. Your set pieces don’t have to span half the length of a movie from the 1990s. Take the famous CIA infiltration scene. This is a complex scene but not an overly long one. De Palma ensures we see and understand each team member’s role in the heist and then lets it play out with escalating tension. The biggest threat is that a bespectacled CIA agent will notice something off in the highly secured room and lock Langley down. The stakes are evident and not complicated to understand. The complications come in the form of little mistakes or unexpected happenings. Will the man enter the room before Ethan is done copying the files? Will the bead of sweat touch the securely armed floor sensors? Will Krieger accidentally lose hold of Ethan, and they get caught? Nothing here is bombastic, yet it still had me on the edge of my seat. Hell, I’ve seen this scene many times, and I was still invested. When we get to Ghost Protocol, we’ll talk about how a similar scene falls flat for me because it goes too large and overcomplicates things.

The acting here is quite good, and it is solid throughout the series. Tom Cruise feels very comfortable in the role of Ethan Hunt, who eventually becomes a Mary Sue. At this point, do we expect Cruise will ever play a character with actual flaws ever again? I liked what he did in Magnolia, but he likely won’t return to that well again. He was genuinely funny in Tropic Thunder; maybe he would do something like that down the road? I even think his turn in the criminally underrated Oblivion was decent acting. But now, like most Hollywood stars, he seems to be running on a treadmill doing the same thing repeatedly. Young Tommy here in the first Mission film is good. Ariana pointed out, and she is always on point, Cruise never phones in his performances. He acts in these movies with the most authentic earnestness, so you can’t help but root for him. A Tom Cruise performance has no ironic detachment; that would be the most bizarre thing to ever see.

The performances by everyone are solid. I think Vanessa Redgrave does a lot with the minor supporting role she’s given. I understood that there was far more to this character than we see on screen. The villains of the picture are great because they directly affect Ethan, not just as an IMF agent but as a person. Their motivations are not ridiculous but perfectly in keeping with the malaise of the post-Cold War era, as people who had devoted their lives to engage in this conflict were now unmoored. I can see the influence of something like John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. However, I think the film (I have not read the book) is a far more weighty story than Mission Impossible. As far as summer blockbusters go, MI is far and away one of the best.

Our journey has just started. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to join me here on PopCult this week and next as we watch and review the many films in the Mission Impossible series and see how each director puts their spin on this collection of tropes and set pieces. If this message self-destructs in the next few seconds, that wasn’t me. I think your computer had some issues.