More effect and affect than a great plot--you won't care about much but it's fun

Rating: 6/10 (4 February 2013)

Mission: Impossible (1996)
The is a taste thing, but I found this movie playing so hard with movie tricks and spy clichés it became weirdly slow at times and weirdly irrelevant. You might say I wasn't supposed to much care about the characters in the twisting plot, but that's like saying they didn't really "intend" to make a great movie, so get over it.
I didn't hate this by any means, I just expected more. I think I liked the third MI movie just because it took that ridiculous, high adventure stuff further. That said, there are totally fun and purposely outrageous scenes that almost make the rest of it worthwhile. Mainly, for me, the insane helicopter train chase. Ha. I laughed and had a good time with that.
For those who know the MI movies this review is meant to raise the question--what is a movie like this supposed to achieve in the viewer? And how does it compare to the best of, to be obvious, the James Bond movies (I just saw "Skyfall," which for all its own flaws was better)? Or does it hold a candle to the really good Jason Bourne movies? (Not really, though the Bourne movies take themselves so so seriously, they occupy a different zone. James Bond always had a kind of detached humor which works well.)
Brian DePalma is a director who knows most of all how to achieve effects. In this way the movie is wonderful--the angles for some simple confrontations, the changing camera angles throughout. His movies always replace substance with style, for sure, and yet the style is so overt and so attractive it almost becomes the substance. You can watch a DePalma movie just with your eyes.
I'll admit once last problem I have here--I don't think much of Tom Cruise. He's a plastic caricature. He's not a bad actor, I suppose, but he lacks some kind of intensity or style or something (I'm think Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, or even Matt Damon for some kind of "persona" at work). He's a big part of the movie.
My favorite actor/actress in this whole thing is the remarkable Kristin Scott Thomas, and she's in it for just a few minutes. Jon Voigt is always welcome, and does his job. Vanessa Redgrave frankly over does her part, but that's part of the DePalma excess. Fun stuff.
In the end, fine, another scene where the weary survivors of an adventure sit and soak up normal cafe life. Take it as it comes. Not half bad, not half good.