The movie that launched the popular action franchise is rather uninspired despite having De Palma at the helm—action is few and far between and the conversational scenes feel lacklustre.
Review #2,413
Dir. Brian De Palma
1996 | USA | Action/Thriller | 110 mins | 2.39:1 | English, French & Czech
PG13 (passed clean) for some intense action violence
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Beart
Plot: An American agent, under false suspicion of disloyalty, must discover and expose the real spy without the help of his organization.
Awards: –
Distributor: Paramount
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – On the Run; Spy
Narrative Style: Slightly Complex
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Mainstream
Viewed: Netflix
Spoilers: No
I’ve enjoyed the ‘Mission: Impossible’ movies over the years, but going back to this first entry I can’t help but feel disappointed.
I think it is because of how superior the later films are in terms of craft, action and entertainment value. Heck, even John Woo’s much-maligned Mission: Impossible II (2000), a personal favourite of mine, is slick and thrilling enough to hide its flaws.
Tom Cruise plays covert agent Ethan Hunt as he is thrust into the limelight after a mission gone awry, perhaps sabotaged from the inside.
With his secret identity at risk of exposure, he must do what he can to find out the truth, while also playing a high-stakes game of life and death that he would continue to flirt with in subsequent movies.
“Excuse me. Mr. Hunt? Would you like to watch a movie?”
It must have been quite a surprise back then to have Brian De Palma at the helm, such is his mastery of craft and storytelling, but in Mission: Impossible he has produced a rather uninspired action-thriller.
The action is few and far between—there’s little in the accumulation of momentum or a meaningful escalation of stakes and tension.
Having said that, it features one of the ‘90s most iconic suspense set-pieces—Hunt infiltrating the CIA in ultra-stealth mode, suspended from the ceiling as he attempts to ‘steal’ top-secret data.
Most of the conversational scenes are slow and lacklustre, sapping away the film’s energy (or what little it has in the first place) and killing any chance of a tightly-paced work shaping up.
Still, it lays most of the groundwork and elements that would make the franchise so popular, establishing Cruise as a bonafide Hollywood action star in the process.
Grade: C+
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 