Mission Impossible

Mission Impossible was originally a 1960s TV show created by Bruce Geller, which chronicled the exploits of a team of secret government agents that often-involved spy espionage, crazy bad guys with threats relevant to the time, and a familiar cast of character you always knew would get out of the danger they were placed in. It was a pretty formula-driven show that lasted seven session over the course of seven years, and its popularity was strong enough that it clearly had lasting impact on viewers, enough that Paramount said they wanted to make a movie out of it. With the movie having Brian De Palma as the director and with relatively popular name, Tom Cruise, working as the lead role and producer, the movie was able to be released miraculously under budget in 1996 (only needing $80 million) and result in a film that definitely performed an impossible feat, but wasn’t able to get out scoot free. After a failed mission which seems to leave all of his fellow team members dead due to supposed sabotage, the last remaining member Ethan Hunt (played by Tom Cruise) is accused of the act as the agency believes he is the mole they suspected was in their ranks. On the run and needing time to uncover the real mole so he can get his name cleared, Ethan teams up with another surviving member of his old team, Claire (played by Emmanuelle Béart) and two disavowed agent; Luther (played by Ving Rhames) and Krieger (played by Jean Reno) to infiltrate a CIA facility to obtain a CIA NOC list (which essentially holds a record of several undercover operatives), which is what the real threats are after. Starting off a still ongoing movie franchise (making up six movies in total), the first movie was generally well received by critics as well as doing pretty well at the box office (becoming the third highest-grossing film of 1996 with $457.7 million worldwide) but looking back at the movie with hindsight, you can definitely see where improvements were made with the franchise going forward. While not awful and at least contain a few memorable set pieces, the film’s overall viewing experience is very mellow and pretty uneventful to say the least.

From an engagement standpoint, making a film about Mission Impossible is plausible, but would be very tricky to do effectively. The show didn’t seem to rely on any sense of real story or character, being mostly focused on this team always going in to do a mission and get out of it, it didn’t take time away to have much of a plot around it. It relied on gripping people with its meticulous suspense rather than its people or its narrative. The movie seems to at least acknowledge that it has to do more than what the show did, and therefore it was pretty unlikely that the audience would get a faithful adaptation when it became a movie. When it starts off, it feels like it’s trying to play with the formula the show had, like starting off with a team that feels in spirit to the show, then proceeding to kill them all off, which does feel a little vindictive to your original source, but at least put themselves in a different direction, but the movie instead just feels like a watered-down version of what the show would normally offer. Mission Impossible is already a dulled-down version of what an actual spy espionage situation would normally be like, but despite the movie at least attempting to capture the sense of subtle planning and quiet execution that the original series had, the movie never feels like its within that same universe. Despite having someone like Brian de Palma, who’s known for his work on crime thriller movies, at the helm, it doesn’t quite work in a similar or even different enough way from the original show. Being unable to go far enough to be a complete satire of the concept while not being complex enough to work in a world of reality, the movie’s half-hearted attempt to follow through with how the original series captured its pacing while lacking patience to handle it cleverly leaves the movie feeling like a traditional action movie with its training wheels still on. Another fault with this logic is how convoluted and boring the plan actually is, with the story by Steven Zaillian and David Koepp (a man notoriously known for writing clunky and unnatural exposition) being extremely hard to connect with. Despite the set-up being pretty simple and featuring a clear enough motivation to get the plot going, the actual evil scheme and what they’re looking for isn’t explained in a good enough way to make its audience want to care about what’s going to happen. As a whole, the execution of its basic premise is sound enough (uninteresting, but nothing awful), but why they are doing anything never feels properly established and the screenplay by Koepp and Robert Towne doesn’t provide any meaningful character growth, emotional scenes or anything that could assist in building any form of connection with the audience.

While the story won’t grip people, the movie might have to rely on its performance for people to be able to stomach through it okay. The narrative isn’t interesting enough to make people follow it and the complete change in the cast of characters means it can’t rely on nostalgia to hold people’s attention, so whatever new people they bring into the movie need to not only be good but engaging. This wouldn’t be too hard to improve upon as the original cast of characters sounded very one-dimensional and bringing in new faces could liven up the franchise a bit, the problem is that none of the new characters are interesting either. Despite what they change, they kept the fact that the characters don’t have any proper introduction or even backstory, and it’s really hard to get invested in characters we know nothing about and have no identity outside of what they can do for on a mission (they are essentially just tools in a box to use and nothing else).  The acting is pretty mixed in terms of how well the actors manage to take their generic portrayal, as no one’s acting is really bad, but half of the cast are boring to watch while the other half are at least enjoyable to watch despite still being dull people with no personality. People like Jean Reno, Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Béart, and Henry Czermy feel like they’re kind of sleepwalking through their performances, while Ving Rhames, Vanessa Redgrave and Tom Cruise feel like they at least fit within this goofier laid-back universe the movie is trying to exist in. Cruise especially gets into whatever he’s saying and doing, even if the audience isn’t aware of what exactly he’s planning to do (it can be a little derpy, but it’s still passionate), and you can feel how he would be able to shape a unique identity for this franchise heading forward, it just hasn’t been properly fleshed out yet.

Despite trying to at least play the film like a traditional spy movie (just without the slowness and preferred adult edge), the movie doesn’t even offer up any serviceable action until the climax. The movie’s three writers not only explains the horribly unnatural flow of the plot and how it feels disconnected from its audience, but also explains the extreme lack of action as there were disagreements between them and de Palma about how they connect to the story (both Zaillian and Towne are Academy Award winning screenwriters, but they probably don’t know how to do action scenes, and Koepp might be more well versed, but his films are incredibly hit or miss and are definitely goofier in delivery). While action definitely isn’t needed for a more traditional spy movie, these don’t feel like realistic spy films, so if they’re going to be exaggerations, it’s a pity that they don’t go all the way with it, even when they actually do have the climax  The train chase at the end is a cool idea and with CG being a pretty new thing at the time, it allowed them to do more daring stunts and visuals than usual as people wouldn’t have to put their lives in danger. Even so, it’s nothing special and can look a little cheap from nowadays standards. The movie is home to a lot of weird close-up shots with titled angles from cinematographer Stephen H. Burum, and whether that was a homage to the original’s series’ odd camerawork, or just a consequence of the movie coming out in the 1990s when it was pretty popular to do that, either way, it’s annoying, doesn’t add much, and just comes off as weird.  The music for the movie is pretty iconic already thanks to the original show’s theme composed by Lalo Schifrin, but Danny Elfman provided a nice new remix of the classic upbeat tune. It’s a great theme for this kind of show or movie and it’s simple enough to be catchy, but also features enough moments of flair and excitable jumps that make it memorable and can even be appreciated in several different styles from pop to techno and (to a slighter lesser extent) heavy metal.

Mission Impossible would later be turned into a franchise that would arguably see lower points than what this movie offered, going even further away from the original source, and completely missing the point altogether. Eventually, it seems like they managed to fix themselves up and made some pretty great flicks under the name, so this one is kind of just left in the ‘’meh’’ category. As a first try, it did attempt to balance a few too many things on its first outing; wanting to be different while also sticking so close to the original film’s cliches wasn’t going to pan out well. Despite how the narrative is unengaging and the characters have no personality, you can clearly feel the actors and the director trying their best to make it work (sometimes, in Cruise’s case, to hilarious results). It’s not a great movie and it’s pretty bland overall (probably best to stick to 4, 5 and 6), but it’s not the worst secret agent movie to check out. When even the original actors from the show exclaim how much they despise your work (with actor Greg Morris, actively calling the film an abomination before dying a few months after the film’s release), it’s hard to keep the secrets of this messy film under wraps.