Product: Mission: Impossible (1996)
Rating: 3.0
Nifty Action Movie...But Not "Mission Impossible"
Cruise & company have a good action movie going here. It has some some very good actors doing some good acting in it, it has some excellent cinematography, some jam-up stuntwork, some way cool CGI imagery, some really fine soundtrack work, and some snappy direction from a name brand director. As some reviewers below have noted, the tunnel train sequence is truly awesome...one of the best "kiss your b--- goodbye" moments in recent action film history. A stunner.If Tom Cruise and his production company had called this movie something like...oh...."Deathwatch", or "Blowback", or some such and gone with it as an action-thriller spy movie about a special covert ops unit of the CIA, DIA, or military intelligence thrown into an emergency situation with a traitor in their midst, I, myself, and undoubtedly a lot of others, would have been fine with it. Most likely I'd have given this film a five-star review.I didn't do that because what Cruise & Company elected to do was to appropriate the rights to the old, dearly-loved "Mission Impossible" spy series---most likely because they thought the jazzy, iconic Lalo Shifrin theme music was "cool as h---" and because the preposterous idea of latex facial makeups that one could peel off in an instant on the run looked too hard to resistas a fun plot gimmick.If those elements were all that truly composed Mission Impossible then this new version should have been piece of cake acceptancewise with the public. But it hasn't been, for the same reason some of these other movie adaptations of popular tv shows haven't been....because there is an arrogance in Hollywood that relates to televison vs. "CINEMA". The Hollywood attitude is one of "We know how to do these things better than you do, tv, so stand aside and let us show you how". Recent duds like "The Avengers" and "The Wild Wild West" show us clearly that Hollywood does NOT know how to do it "better' than television. They just know how to do it bigger, flashier, and smarmier. Content-wise, classic tv usually comes out miles ahead.An earlier reviewer of this film here at Amazon, Barry Chow, hit the nail on the head when he said this Cruise version betrays its heritage. That's exactly what it does. Mission Impossible (and its team) was about stealth and guile; about putting one over on somebody and leaving them none the wiser until it was too late. It was a CAPER concept, closer in intent to "The Sting" than to "True Lies". In fact that is what each of the IM Force's missions WERE..."Stings"....not Detonation Derbys. Cruise & Company seem to have forgotten this...or never understood it in the first place. And the power of the real "MI" was that it was, at heart, an ENSEMBLE show (like "Friends" on t.v., or "E.R."), with the TEAM pulling the scams on their target victims. A "team" is vaguely depicted in this Cruise version, but basically...in music terms...as Ethan Hunt's "side men". The thrust of this story's interaction is actually Ethan Hunt, Secret Agent, vs. the "Mysterious Traitor".And it is the identity of this sleazy, ruthless,double-dealing scumbucket of a traitor that is at the root of all the "boomer' backlash against this movie. And most justifiably so. They have made him Jim Phelps. And to all Americans everywhere who "grew up with Jim Phelps", this little plot device is utterly outrageous. Beyond the pale. A lot of the"gen X" and younger crowd truly DON'T understand why this movie ticks so many people off. It's because a popular "hero" figure to a couple of generations of Americans has been turned...for the sake of 'edginess"...into an odious sleazeball. and that doesn't sit well with a lot of people...AT ALL. If you don't understand the annoyance, try this...try waiting ten or fifteen years down the road and then buying your ticket to see the movie version of "Friends", where you'll find that Ross is a serial killer, Rachel is a cannibal, and Joey a Nazi transvestite. And when you get mad because you know full well that this is NOT who these people are and NOT what they're about then maybe you'll start getting a glimmer of why this review only deals Tom Cruise 3 stars instead of 5.