Inexcusable revision of a classic TV series.

Rating: 5/10 (1 February 2006)

I haven't seen this movie for a while, but I do remember that when the movie ended I was livid. It wasn't that the production was poor (it was quite well done) or that the acting was poor (no Oscars, but good solid performances by all). The problem was with the screenplay.
For those of you who did not grow up watching the Mission Impossible TV series, I can understand why you liked this movie and its sequel: you have nothing to base your opinion on except the movie. But for someone who has seen almost every episode of the Mission Impossible TV series, there were two fatal flaws in the screenplay that made me want to force-feed the screenplay back to the writers (David Koepp and Robert Towne) or at least force them to create an UNABRIDGED, G-rated screenplay for James Joyce's "Ulysses" before they are allowed to write anything else.
The first sin has to do with teamwork. In the TV series, Jim Phelps would receive instructions on his next task, and after the message had self destructed, Jim would go about selecting those individuals who would be needed to complete this particular "impossible mission." After Jim Phelps met with the members of this team to discuss what needed to be done, the show would go about showing how each individual or groupings of individuals would go about with their assigned tasks (i.e. how DO you get tons of gold bullion out of a heavily guarded and surveilled vault without arousing suspicion?). This movie ended up ONLY being about Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise's character). As a matter of fact, MI2 was, once again, ONLY being about Ethan Hunt. This is so out of character with Bruce Geller's original TV series that I felt that the only thing the movie and the TV series had in common was the name "Mission Impossible." I think the reason for this is that in this day and age of movies like "The Bourne Identity" (which I liked, by the way), the Bond movies, and others, where there is only one person who seems to have his act together, and can fight off a small army of highly trained assassins without getting scratched, the idea of the individual hero is believed to be more palatable than one showing teamwork (other than movies depicting sports or war). In the TV series, I cared about the characters Â… in this movie I was hoping Ethan Hunt would slip on a banana peel or something.
*** SPOILERS FOLLOW! *** *** YOU'VE BEEN WARNED! ***
The second sin was where the writers had Jim Phelps as a double agent. While it's true that a writer can do just about anything he/she pleases for the purposes of writing a good story, you are not supposed to make major changes to an established character for the sake of the story. For example, what if there was a remake of "Forrest Gump" where Gump becomes smart enough to receive the Nobel Prize for Physics? That would be a major turn-off for me. How about Harry Potter teaming up with Valdemort to become drug overlords? How about Wallace and Gromit being ax murderers and using the victims as a spread for Wallace's "cracking toast"? You get the idea. In the Mission Impossible TV series, there were plenty of opportunities for Jim Phelps to be indicated as suspicious. But guess what? He was someone that was so committed to his team members that when one of them got captured in one episode he came up with a hastily made plan, using the remaining members (including himself), to get that member back. In other words: he was never a turncoat! Making him one in this movie was lazy and sloppy writing, was just as ridiculous a premise as the above examples, and was inexcusable in my estimation.
*** END OF SPOILERS ***
For those who liked the movie, I really do understand why you did. But due to the writing I could not enjoy the movie at all. Because of this I rate "Mission Impossible" (the movie) a 5.
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For those of you who haven't seen the TV series, take a look at a couple of episodes. I'm sure the 60's technology will be a turn-off to some, and many of the plots DO strain the limits of believability. But many of the plots also embodied a spark of originality and creativity that I embraced and always had me wondering how in God's name they were going to pull off THIS one. Getting the gold bullion out of the vault was one such episode (mentioned above). Another episode that is seared in my mind was how they managed to get a criminal to reveal the location of a stolen stash of millions of dollars before the statue of limitations expired. Yet another episode (the one mentioned previously about the IMF (Impossible Mission Force) team member who was captured) was frightening in the way it portrayed the captured member being interrogated with special emphasis on trying to discover what this members' worst fears were and how to exploit them. When the captors found out this fear happened to be of enclosed spaces they used it to maximum effect. You were shown how the sanity of the member started to unravel and how that member started to crack, almost giving away the existence of the IMF. In other words, the TV series was about SO much more than just one character "whuppin' ass".