Mission (more or less) accomplished

Rating: 7/10 (26 March 2019)

Plot; Agent Ethan Hunt is framed and must fight to both clear his name and discover the actual culprit before they can sell a list containing sensitive information.
The M:I franchise is an odd one. W/gaps of 4, 6, 5 and 4 years, it lacked any kind of set release schedule typically associated w/blockbuster franchises. And bouncing between wildly different directors, it also struggled to find a consistent tone. But for the most part they entertained and found enough success to warrant another. When director Christopher McQuarrie came on board for the series' fifth entry, the franchise once again bucked franchise convention by hitting its stride. Today, 6 films and 23 years later, the Mission: Impossible film series is more popular than ever. Having enjoyed the most recent entry, Fallout, this past Summer, I've had an itch to go back and revisit the original as a sort of compare and contrast. And contrast they do. Wildly so. I wasn't surprised by this, but that contrast wasn't exactly the type of contrast I was expecting.
M:I isn't really an action movie. At least not in the conventional sense, and certainly not in the mold of Fallout. Aside from its explosive finale, there's nothing here that I'd call an action scene. At least not in the "Bang! Bang! Zoom! Zoom!" sense. It's more of a thriller than an action movie. And like many such films from its era, it carries a whiff of Cold War zeitgeist even as it acknowledges its end. But other than that and its amusingly outdated tech, it's not as "90s" as I thought. I was expecting it to be more 90s than Bill Clinton watching Friends and drinking a Crystal Pepsi while wearing a Lollapalooza t-shirt at Beavis and Butthead's house, but it's actually got a more timeless feel.
Just as the series struggled to find a tone and style, so too has Cruise (and the writers) failed to give Ethan Hunt a definable personality or set of characteristics (beyond, perhaps, a dogged determination). Bond's personality has varied wildly over the years depending on the era and the actor, but he's had a basic set of traits and tropes to help ground him. Hunt has none of those things. Even as the last two films began to give some shape to the series, I can't give you even a thumbnail of who Ethan Hunt is. That's not to say Cruise is bad. In fact, he's quite good. Whatever limitations and range Cruise may have, he has undeniable star power, and it's an asset here. He's surrounded by a uniformly strong cast, w/Jon Voigt (though sadly not his car *90s reference*), Vanessa Redgrave, Jean Reno, Henry Czerny and series regular Ving Rhames doing top work. Redgrave and Czerny in particular are fun to watch, and I wish they'd been brought back in future entries.
In juxtaposition to Fallout, this first M:I movie is a tad slow, even though it clocks in at under 2 hours to Fallout's near 2 and a half hour runtime, but taken on its own merits it's a well made popcorn thriller w/just enough twists and turns to satisfy.