Mission Impossible (1996)

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When it was released a decade and a half ago, the first Mission Impossible film made a decent box-office performance, but received lukewarm critical appreciation, deemed a stylish throwback to the TV series, but with a plot too convoluted for its own good. Viewing it in 2011, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the movie, and not only that, I found much to admire of this entertaining fare which is also as much an exercise in three different genres: Cold War spy movie, heist flick, and an adventure thriller that is kind of North by North West meets From Russia With Love.

The movie opens in Prague, where an IMF team led by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) is commanded into a mission straight out of a John Le Carre manual, to do with apprehending a mole in the midst of the diplomatic corps. Things don't quite go according to plan, leaving an agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) being accused of espionage, disavowed, and hunted. The second part of the movie follows Ethan Hunt and an eclectic crew of rogue agents (Jean Reno, Ving Rhames, and Emmanuelle Beart) to steal information from the vault of the CIA at Langley. This included a prolonged and now infamous sequence with Tom Cruise hanging on wires in a temperature and sound controlled room, hovering over pressure sensitive floors. The last act of the movie occured on the TGV from London to Paris with a showdown between Ethan and the real mole, known as Job.

There is a macguffin in Mission Impossible that has something to do with a NOC list of undercover IMF agents that is in the demand of a certain arms dealer. This macguffin does its role efficiently - getting the plot moving without getting tangled in a series of contrivances. Plus, admirably, it all does make sense. I wonder if this is because the script, written by Hollywood heavy-weights Steve Zaillian and David Koepp, was ahead of its time in depiction of internet and/or wireless connections, but whatever the reason, the plot here is probably more comprehensible, and feels more intelligent, than the likes of the Bourne movies, or Salt, or the latest James Bond films.

Also acquiring much more refinement with age is the movie's sense of style. The photography of this film is thrilling without being over-the-top. A great deal of suspense is generated through framing and cinematography, and a very dedicated and intelligent respect to the integrity of space. Consider another famous sequence where Ethan Hunt throws an explosive/chewing gum onto a fish tank, which eventually detonated, with water and fish bursting out. There was strict adherence to the sense of symmetry and perpendicular lines of sight, and at the climax of the scene, the editing remained steady as the scene was - yes you're reading this right - reduced to slow motion! Such is beauty in the looks and attention to detail that director Brian de Palma (reassembling his team from another beautifully stylish film The Untouchables) imbued onto this film.

Following De Palma's Mission Impossible, the franchise was later helmed by John Woo and J.J. Abrams respectively (with Brad Bird helming the upcoming 4th film). None of them have really achieved a sense of narrative cohesion and bravura one would expect from a truly Mission Impossible film, but the first one comes close. It's not perfect by any means, for instance, its plots couldn't quite gel together to escape a sense of tedium. However, in a series in which all the films are easy to like, this one I find most worthwhile to admire.