One of the Most suspenseful action movies

Rating: 8/10 (23 July 2015)

Mission: Impossible is directed by Brian DePalma and was released in 1996. Almost 20 years after the movie's initial release, I am very glad to say the movie still holds up very well for the most part, which is not always easy especially for action movies, since they are almost always heavy on special effects.
This was the movie in which Tom Cruise showed the world that he could be an action star and how much he actually encouraged doing his own stunts. He owns the role of Ethan Hunt and gives an incredibly charismatic performance. The directing and cinematography is still pretty solid, although the movie suffers from a very big flaw that is pretty common in spy movies: the plot is convoluted, sometimes even messy. By the end of the movie, director Brian DePalma really tries to tie up loose ends, but doesn't fully accomplish it. It's just a very hard plot to follow and, in the end there's just more confusion.
But aside from that, I believe Mission: Impossible is a very good movie, which set the standards high in the series. There are two scenes in this film that are by far some of the most suspenseful scenes I have ever seen. I'm talking about the scene in the restaurant with Hunt and Kittrige and the scene where they steal the disk in the IMF headquarters. In the second one, the lack of music and just silence for almost the entire duration of the scene really pays off, and increases the suspense.
Mission: Impossible is a movie that could have easily been a lot better if they had just put the plot together more tightly than the end result, but overall, it is a very strong first entry in a successful series.