Insubstantial, but also stylish and fast moving

Rating: 6/10 (10 January 2008)

Until I caught this film on television recently, I had only seen the second episode in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise. I must say that I was not impressed by "Mission: Impossible II" which struck me as a leaden, humourless attempt to make a James Bond-style spy thriller and which had dissuaded me from seeing either of the other two instalments. The first film, however, is a very different beast from its successor. The differences are doubtless due to the fact that the two films were made by two very different directors. "Mission: Impossible II" was made by John Woo, best known as the director of violent action-adventures. Its predecessor was made by Brian de Palma, who has a reputation for Hitchcockian suspense thrillers such as "Dressed to Kill", and has many of the hallmarks of a de Palma film.
"Mission: Impossible" is based on the old television series of that name, familiar from my childhood, and borrows a number of elements from it, such as the distinctive theme tune, the character of Jim Phelps and catchphrases such as "Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is". (That one always used to baffle me as a child. Are spies really given the opportunity to say which assignments they will accept and which they will decline?) Although it does incorporate Bond-like elements, it is more like a cross between a Bond-style film and those paranoid Cold War thrillers such as "The Spy who Came in from the Cold", where the hero was never sure whom he could trust and where anyone, including the hero's closest associates- perhaps even the hero himself- could turn out to be a double, or even a triple, agent. (In this it differs from the original series, which generally reflected the moral certainties of the Cold War seen as Good v Evil).
The film opens with Phelps and a team of agents on a mission to prevent a traitor from stealing a computer file containing identities of all America's double agents and then passing this information on to terrorists and criminal gangs. (This was made after the fall of the Berlin Wall, so the Russians are no longer the villains. The film, however, follows the tradition of using Eastern European cities as the setting for spy thrillers, so the mission takes place at an Embassy reception in a misty, mysterious-looking Prague). Unfortunately, the team have been betrayed and all of them except Phelps, his wife Claire and an agent named Ethan Hunt are killed. Because Hunt survives he immediately comes under suspicion of being the traitor who betrayed the team, so he is forced to go on the run.
The rest of the story centres upon Hunt's attempts to elude his pursuers and to unmask the real mole. Another reviewer complains that most of De Palma's recent movies have been more about style than content. That assessment is, I think, true of this film. As one might expect with de Palma, there are a number of stylish directorial set-pieces. Probably the most memorable is the sequence in which a high-speed train, with Hunt clinging to the roof, is followed into the Channel Tunnel by the helicopter which is trying to kill him. (In reality, of course, the Tunnel is not wide enough for such a manoeuvre to be feasible, although this was presumably a deliberate error committed in order to increase the suspense. Most of the audience will probably assume, as I did as soon as I saw the entrance to the Tunnel looming, that the chase will end as soon as the train enters it). Another memorable scene comes where Hunt is trying to steal important information from the CIA headquarters, even though the computer containing the data is in a vault protected by all sorts of hi-tech devices, including temperature sensors and infra-red light beams. (This scene may have inspired a similar one in "Entrapment", made three years later, where Catherine Zeta Jones has to avoid a similar network of beams).
As is normal in films of this type the plot is not only extremely complex- indeed, at times it is so complex as to be virtually impossible to follow- but also, at times, extremely implausible. Hunt is played by Tom Cruise who, despite his superstar status, does not seem really suited to a Bond-style action hero, lacking the suave, debonair charm of, say, a Pierce Brosnan whose first Bond film, "Goldeneye", had been made the previous year. (I must say, however, that Cruise is better here than he was to be in "Mission: Impossible II"). The result is a film which is, in many ways, insubstantial, but also fast moving and often stylish and enjoyable. 6/10