As Seen on TV: Mission Impossible (Dir Brian De Palma, 1h56m, 1996)

There was a time before Mission Impossible became the starring vehicle for Tom Cruise to carry out some of the most death-defying stunts ever committed to celluloid (or die trying) in ever increasing personal danger in ever more convoluted plots. A time where Mission Impossible was just another remake of a 1960s TV show fondly, and increasingly dimly remembered by an aging audience. A time called the mid-90s. I've written at some length about the thirty year cycle of nostalgia, of cinema's plundering of 1960s television in the early to mid 1990s, which can considered by its nadir at the end of the decade, Wild Wild West, but Mission Impossible arrives at that sweet spot in the decade where these films had proven to be a success, but before the trend ran out of ideas.

Essentially adapting the 1960s TV series verbatim, following the exploits of the Impossible Mission Force, or IMF, and their missions against Soviet governments, dictators, and crime lords among others, so the remake immediately sets things up, and brings the setting forward into the post-Cold War era of the early 90s. Enter, thus, Mission Impossible's best asset, revealed mere minutes into the film as he tugs off a rubber mask. Enter Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise of the early 90s is undeniably a major star, capable of pulling in audiences for blockbusters such as Top Gun, genre fare in Interview with a Vampire, and earning critical praise from films like Born on the Fourth of July and Rain Man. 

Ethan Hunt feels like the character Cruise was waiting for; indeed, Cruise largely produced the film, picked De Palma as director, and much of the character's arc in this film is directly comparable to Cruise's other action roles, as Hunt goes from wide-eyed but capable team player to no nonsense, daredevil action star. We begin with the mission itself, delivered to Jon Voight's Jim Phelps, not only the leader of the team, but a father figure to Hunt. It seems simple enough; capture a rogue agent attempting to fence off the list of the IMF agents' true identities, but whilst the mission seems to go well, including more of the film's characteristic mask work and heist-movie sensibilities, the team are doublecrossed and killed, with only Hunt seemingly left alive. 

Brought in by the suspicious IMF head Kittridge (Henry Czerny), who believes Hunt to be the mole responsible for the actual leak of the list, working with a mysterious armsdealer, Max-later revealled to be a scene stealing Vanessa Redgrave. Subsequently making his getaway in one of the best action sequences of the film-the destruction of three huge fish tanks, in an action sequence requested by Cruise. Hunt must band together with a rag-tag team, including Jean Reno's duplicitous jack of all trades, with Reno in full anti-hero foil to Cruise's action hero, and Ving Rhames' PC expert helping Cruise's team break into CIA's Langley headquarters leading to the film's most iconic sequence, Hunt's wirework descent into the vault to steal the information, which remains perhaps the defining image of the film.

Around these action setpieces-the finale involves a high-speed chase between a helicopter and a TGV train-is the narrative itself; this is where De Palma's influence, his decades in making crime films and thrillers, are most keenly felt, not only in the film, but across the series in general. As a result, there's intricate plotting, in which the other surviving member of Hunt's team, the mysterious figure of Job-where else but a De Palma Mission Impossible film could a tense cat and mouse sequence in which Hunt hunts for Max be played out across a series of Bible study message boards?-and a smart script by David Koepp and Robert Towne, who would also script the second film. 

This quick-witted plot is, above all things, largely missing from the subsequent instalments; MI:II and the subsequent series may be as convoluted, may be as full of double crosses, masks torn off to reveal familiar friends and foes, may be as full of death defying stunts, and Lalo Schifrin's iconic score (reworked for Mission Impossible by the junior half of U2), may thunder into life, but the smart pace and balance of the first film is gone. Rather than a film in which the stunts, and the performance of its leading man and action hero, are in service to the rest of the picture, everything in the latter instalments seems to put Cruise, and his herculean stunts, front and centre, from scaling the Burj Khalifa to HALO jumps above Paris, to helicopter chases with the actor clinging on below. 

All are impressive, and Cruise has been undeniably pivotal in pushing stunt work into the stratosphere; his death-defying setpieces have become much of the focus of the marketing for these films, around which technojargon and recursive plots of ever more advanced organisations planning ever more apocalyptic ends hang, superflous to the main drive of the film. Ethan Hunt no longer feels like a mortal man, less yet capable of ever truly being out of his depth as a hero. Against these modern Labours of Hercules, Mission Impossible remains exciting, not merely because of the smart marriage of action and plot, but because for a moment, via his most famous role, Cruise is brought down to the level of a mere fallible action hero, who must use his wits and acting ability-and undoubted bravery in death defying stunts-to clear his name. 

Rating: Highly Recommended

Mission Impossible is available via Netflix and on DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment

Next week, another remake of a cult 1960s series, as we go back to 1991 to consider the spookfest that started this entire trend off with The Addams Familiy