director
Brian De Palma
screenwriters
David Koepp
Robert Towne
story
by
David Koepp
Steven Zaillian
based on
characters created by
Bruce Geller
producers
Tom Cruise
Paula Wagner
cinematographer
Stephen H. Burum
music
Danny Elfman
editor
Paul Hirsch
cast
Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt)
Jon Voight (Jim Phelps)
Emmanuelle Béart (Claire Phelps)
Henry Czerny (Eugene Kittridge)
Jean Reno (Franz Krieger)
Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell)
Kristin Scott Thomas (Sarah Davies)
Vanessa Redgrave (Max)
Dale Dye (Frank Barnes)
Emilio Estevez (Jack Harmen)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 110m
u.s.
release: May 22, 1996
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other brian
de palma films
reviewed on this website:
- snake
eyes
see also:
- mission:
impossible 2
- mission: impossible III
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It isn't until Mission:
Impossible is almost finished that you realize it never actually
started. This, I hope, will be the emptiest spectacle of the
season (God help us if they get any emptier) -- a pointless,
aggressive non-movie to rival Batman
Forever. Summer blow-outs like this can bring out the
Chicken Little in those who care about film: The sky is falling!
Cinema is dead -- long live the corporate thrill-machines!
The director, Brian De Palma, is a past master at operating thrill-machines
(Blow Out, Carrie, The Untouchables, a host
of others). So I don't understand why this one crashes so often.
There are a handful of witty De Palma touches, but after a while
it gets depressing to sit there and count all the De Palma-isms
for lack of anything else to hold your interest. It's like hearing
sporadic Jimi Hendrix riffs scattered amid two hours of Muzak.
Mission: Impossible has a headache-inducing plot that
I'd just as soon not explore in depth. Secret agent Ethan Hunt
(Tom Cruise), working for veteran spy Jim Phelps (Jon Voight,
in for Peter Graves), gets caught up in a scramble for a valuable
computer disk, and some agents trust him, even if he doesn't
trust them .... I can feel the pounding behind my left
eye. I don't remember why the disk is valuable, and I don't care.
Nor, evidently, did De Palma,
or the screenwriters (Robert Towne, Steven Zaillian, and David
Koepp are credited), or anyone else involved in the movie. Mission:
Impossible is vague and dull in an infuriating way: Nothing
is at stake, nobody on the screen means anything to us. (At least
Twister found a few seconds
for characterization -- banal characterization, granted,
but still.) It starts loudly and confidently and maintains that
pitch, but it's all bluff.
De Palma has rounded up a stellar international cast (Vanessa
Redgrave, Emmanuelle Béart, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jean
Reno, Ving Rhames), only to forget about them or to kill them
off rudely; any movie that loses Kristin Scott Thomas in the
first reel obviously has no priorities. Mostly, De Palma sticks
with his unexciting star, who is also the co-producer, unfortunately.
Cruise himself is a bit of a machine, but De Palma can't rewire
him. Cruise has only one thing on his hard drive: cockiness.
Two sequences stand out: a nail-biting entry into a heavily-guarded
computer room, and the outrageously phallic climax involving
a train, a helicopter, and a tunnel. De Palma pumps up the action
the way he always does, turning suspense into a sly joke. But
too often the action simply collapses into bombastic special
effects that your cousin Floyd could direct, given $70 million
and cutting-edge computer pizzazz.
De Palma inserts his first
joke at the end of the opening credits, when his name appears
over an image of a tape famously self-destructing. But the joke
may be on him. This Mission results in the self-destruction
of a great film artist for the sake of Hollywood, commerce, and
star ego. It's a mission De Palma shouldn't have chosen to accept.
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