A good idea that is its own worst enemy

Rating: 5/10 (11 June 2007)

The plot of "Mission Impossible" is like a defective fireman's trampoline. It is painstakingly stitched together, reinforced and strengthened. Like a faulty apparatus, however it stretches and breaks under the sheer weight of what it is supposed to support.
I can explain the entire plot of this movie. I viewed the movie recently after seeing it five or so times before, but the difference was that it had been four years since my last viewing. With the aid my previous experience, I was finally able to connect all of the dots and see the whole picture. Contrary to popular belief, every facet of the story is explained, but not clearly so. In the end, it is like somebody viewing a complex tapestry through a pair of fogged glasses.
I noticed a curious coincidence when I watched the theatrical trailer. A point was made to show all of the violent moments of the film. The images include mid-air acrobatics, fights, chases in the street, gunshots, exploding cars, guns being loaded, a woman being slammed against furniture, people clinging to the outside of a bullet train and an exploding helicopter. The impression is that of an exciting action film; the movie itself is not. The trailer even makes Henry Czerny's character look like the villain when he is not.
The Impossible Mission Force, or IMF, is the most elite branch of the CIA where failure results in the repudiation of all knowledge of the operation. Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt, a member of an IMF team led by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight, in the role originally played by Peter Graves). Phelps is absent for the first operation, an elaborate deception used to coerce a confession. Jim's wife (foreign film actor Emmanuelle Béart) is under anesthesia for the act, and the team is worried that she will die from being under too long. It seems logical that the IMF would not risk the life of an agent without an anesthesiologist present, but never mind.
The team's mission, which they choose to accept, is to catch a traitor attempting to steal the NOC List, which matches undercover code names with the agents' birth names. All but Ethan are killed, and the director of the CIA (the aforementioned Henry Czerny), believes that Hunt is an agency mole since he is the only one to survive, although Claire is soon discovered to also be alive. After his escape, Hunt contacts the list's potential buyer (Vanessa Redgrave, highly respected international actress) and agrees to steal the real McCoy so he can discover the identity of the man who betrayed him and his team.
The problem is that the plot does explain itself thoroughly, but does so in such a convoluted and roundabout fashion that it leaves heads spinning like tops. There is one section where the mole is lying and trying to shift the blame to another. During this time Hunt is saying and thinking competing versions, and the result is confusing so nobody is sure what to believe. If you want see films that have complicated plots but explain them with marked clarity, watch "Star Trek VI" or "The Maltese Falcon." It is bad enough when the casual moviegoer is baffled, but when Roger Ebert says he cannot pass a test on the plot, the script has some serious problems.
The other issue is the movie's inability to define itself. Despite the sales pitch of the preview, there is little action to speak of. It is really more of a suspense film, but by misrepresenting itself, it limits its potential. The two famous scenes involve the theft of a computer program from an impenetrable vault and the finale when a helicopter is attached to a bullet train and gets dragged into the Chunnel (an underwater train tunnel connecting England to France, for those who do not know). Only three bullets are fired, and none of them by Hunt.
The acting is mostly pedestrian. Only Czerny and Voight, and to a lesser extent Ving Rhames and Jean Reno, stand out. Czerny is deliberate and Voight is especially effective with the delivery of two lines, "if discovered, they'll be executed," and "They stamped it didn't they? Those damn Gideons!" Yet, for some reason, I enjoy it. It is probably the ingenuity of the vault theft and helicopter finale. Despite its significant flaws, it has a real sense of fun and some wit in the dialogue. It will disappoint fans of the original series and people expecting lots of action, but it is just good enough to rank a six out of ten.