Product: Mission: Impossible (1996)
Rating: 4.0
Preposterous & unforgettable
Less an homage to the classic show, "Mission: Impossible" is more like an homage to cold-war thrillers in general, with international travel, intrigue in European cities and some high-tension excitement inspired by the classic hesit movie "Topkapi". MI stars Cruise as Ethan Hunt, the front man of the "Impossible Mission Force" (which coincidentally shares its initials with "International Monetary Fund - interesting coincidence).The flick begins in Prague with a mission to nab a turncoat who steals an index of secret agents across the world - the NOC list. At first everything works like clockwork - then it goes wrong. Hunt finds himself on the run as his fellow agents die. Soon, he's the sole survivor, and the disk is missing. Unable to return home (his superiors think he's the turncoat) Hunt goes after the disk himself. Following up on some slim clues, Hunt hooks up with a British arch-criminal played by Vanessa Redgrave who has the disk - cleverly convincing her that its "tainted" (it has a virus that causes whatever computer runs it to emit a distinctive frequency). What Redgrave's character can't give him, is the identity of the man who gave her the disk - likely also responsible for betraying Hunt's team. To get that, Hunt will have to steal the NOC list himself - and that will require him to hook up with the darkest agents ever to grace the IMF's "Disavowed-by-the-Secretary Agents" list", stage an impossible burglary of CIA HQ, and download the information directly from the CIA mainframe. Then he must navigate his fellow thieves, including Jean Reno as a maverick assassin and pilot, Ving Rhames as a master-hacker, and Julie Delpy as the wife of Mr. Phelps.This was a great flick - at times so incomprehensible you're tempted to write it off all as nonsense. But Cruise and DePalma miraculously manage to hold your attention for the entire run. There are so many great momemts that work with subtlety off of DePalma's high-tension direction - as if the director had done his work suspended from the ceiling by wires in some corner of the CIA. Much better by half than its witless sequel, MI keeps from self-destructing through the end of the movie.WISH I'D THOUGHT OF IT: The CIA computer room is secured by numerous devices meant to keep anybody from getting to the computer. They've boobytrapped the walls and the floor to keep the computer safe; there are heat sensors, pressure sensors and sound sensors - everything to keep anybody from getting into the computer when the designated users locks up. So why if the keyboard is what they're trying to protect, why ain't it boobytrapped?