Mission for Dummies

Rating: 4/10 (26 February 2013)

(This review is heavy on spoilersbut it's also 16 years old and it's your fault if you haven't seen this yet)
Perhaps it's unfair to finally get around to re-watching and reviewing the original 1996 Mission: Impossible. The evolution of each movie is so clear that this looks it was a lost episode of the 1960s TV show it was based on.
And it feels like it's been that long since I've seen this. I remember disliking it and wrongfully being confused – I can't see why now, but I never realized how much I didn't care for it. Mercifully and much like the franchise has evolved, the original does get better as it progresses.
Only your mission is to get through the first half before the fun begins.
The movie opens up with what I'm guessing is 1st year spies. It's one thing to explain to the audience this gadget does this, or causes this harm, but for the characters to act foolish like they know less than the typical non-espionage viewer, is just plain pathetic. Prime example is poor, out-of-place, Kristin Scott Thomas who, apparently, never heard of either the TV program or any spy-film before.
Worse than these high school dropouts posing as international agents, is that they kill off the majority of the team within 25 minutes from the start. YOU DON'T DO THAT – or the original series wouldn't have lasted as long, obviously.
And what's even worse than that? (Fast forwarding to the end) YOU DO NOT MAKE JIM PHELPS THE BAD GUY. Seriously? I can see why they did it – the star, Tom Cruise, wasn't going to play the older, white-haired leader and they (or most likely he) wanted to give the pending franchise to his Ethan Hunt character. Fine, but you still don't make the long-lasting hero the villain. You don't even kill him off – just make him retire, disappear using his own skills, etc.
Anyhoo, the movie focuses a diskette containing undercover CIA operative's names purposely getting into the wrong hands to both capture the bad guys and revealing the double agent. Yes, I said diskette – the old 3½ inch diskette that probably couldn't even hold the contents of this review, let alone any kind of list as big as described in the movie.
I digress. As mentioned, the amateurish crew is dismissed early and Ethan "Wake up, Claire! Jim's dead! He's DEAD! They're ALL DEAD!" Hunt is blamed. This is where it gets good – for a few moments. After he meets the fantastic Vanessa Redgrave as Max, he recruits future staple and great Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and short-timer Franz Krieger (Jean Reno) to break into the CIA headquarters and the (at the time) wildly original, tense and fantastic wire-hanging scene takes place.
Of course, just so the movie does escalate past the 2 stars I gave it, during the best scene, there's a rat – REALLY? – that scares/distracts Franz in an air duct. Much like the first half of the movie, this makes me feel they weren't taking any of this too seriously, making this just a few steps above Get Smart.
Following that, and literally jumping to the end, there's a fantastically unrealistic leap of faith from a helicopter and a super-train in a tunnel that makes me unintentionally laugh every time I see it.
The movie made a huge mistake of being mostly spy and very little action, whereas Part II was also wrong at playing the opposite card. Luckily, they *finally* hit their stride with Part III and Ghost Protocol that, rightfully, matched both needed qualities equally.
This actually very slow "action" movie, which does contain a somewhat reminiscent of older spy-films, albeit dumbed down, was just a misstep from fairly decent director, Brian De Palma. It's almost worth a shot, just to find out who Ethan Hunt is and why Jim Phelps doesn't show up in the sequels. It did contain some decent cinematography and a very good score, but overall it's a miss. Thankfully, the sequels, with the exception of parts III and Ghost Protocol, are pretty much stand alone so you don't have to endure this experience.
"I've been disavowed," says Ethan. Don't worry: it won't be your last time.