Product: Mission: Impossible (1996)
Rating: 1.0
Too Bad It Didn't Self-Destruct In Five Seconds
If you're a younger viewer you might be entertained by the gadgets and explosions. However, if you grew up watching the original T.V. series, as I did, you would walk away from this movie shouting, as did the late Greg Morris (who played Barney, the technical wiz, in the original series), "What an abomination!"The series was about a highly skilled and disciplined group of elite intelligence agents who combine their unique talents and skills to accomplish missions deemed impossible in the ordinary wing of the C.I.A. Their success was made possible, partly, by their working as a single integrated team. Each had his or her specific task to perform as part of the overall plan. Mr. Phelps, the I.M.F. team leader, assembled his team and they developed the mission plan and procedures the way NASA, Grumman and North American Rockwell engineers did in accomplishing the moon missions. No one stood out or tried to dominate.The movie completely wrecks this premise. Yes, it has the gadgets and high-tech stuff (like the laytex masks) and there seems to be a team of sorts, but that's all that the movie takes from the series. They purport to operate as a team, but that turns out to be an illusion. The entire team, except the one played by Tom Cruise, are double agents. Phelps (played by John Voight) turns out to be a traitor and enemy agent. They are all out to kill Tom Cruise, who has to save the world and kill Phelps and the entire I.M.F team as well -- all by himself, of course.Cruise's ego demanded that no one else share the spotlight with him. He just appropriated the title, music and trademark gadgets of the Mission Impossible series to produce a one-man hero shoot-em-up and blow-em-up flick that has nothing to do with the original series. None of the original cast were offered roles in the movie. Offering Peter Graves (the original Phelps) a cameo part would have been the class thing to do. But neither the movie, nor Cruise, have any class. Teens would find it entertaining, but if you are an adult who remembers the original series, don't see this movie. You will be disappointed.Paramount should release the entire T.V. series -- all seasons -- on DVD.