Mission: Impossible (1996)
Directed by: Brian De Palma
Premise: Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is a spy working for the IMF (Impossible Mission Force). When his team is killed in an ambush, Hunt goes on the run from intelligence agents who believe he is a traitor. Hunt must prove his innocence and expose the truth.
What Works: The first Mission: Impossible feature was released in 1996 and it was somewhat unusual. The action genre of that time mostly consisted of Die Hard imitators and cop films following the lead of Lethal Weapon. While a few of these movies were well crafted, a lot of them were dumb and based around shootouts and explosions. While Mission: Impossible had some spectacular qualities, it wasn’t dumb and combined the thrills of post-1980s action pictures with the espionage stories of an earlier era such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and 3 Days of the Condor. 1996’s Mission: Impossible was intended as the start of an ongoing series but the filmmakers treat this as a standalone story. They don’t fall into the trap of excess set up and world building (which was not in vogue in films of that time) but do set up a style and tone that would carry through the rest of the series. Mission: Impossible has a number of terrific set pieces and they are great showcases for director Brian De Palma. His strength was technical filmmaking craft which in some projects came across cold but in Mission: Impossible that precision complements the material. The opening sequence in which Ethan Hunt’s team is killed is brutally efficient. The standout set piece is the CIA vault robbery, which is now a classic sequence in this genre. But aside from the climactic tunnel chase, the action of Mission: Impossible is mostly of a small scale which makes everything credible. That quality is evident in Tom Cruise’s performance. Cruise frequently played confident and charismatic characters and while that is true in Mission: Impossible Cruise’s performance in the first film has a vulnerable quality that makes Hunt an engaging and accessible hero.
What Doesn’t: The restraint of 1996’s Mission: Impossible separated it from the other action movies released at that time but that quality also distinguishes it from the rest of the series which increasingly focused on elaborate set pieces. Viewers who come to the original Mission: Impossible through the later films may be surprised by the filmmaking restraint. When Mission: Impossible was released in 1996 a lot of viewers reported being confused by the plot. It’s not really that complicated (the premise is remarkably similar to the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Eraser which was released the same year) but the storytelling style embraces the intrigue. Attentive viewers will follow it just fine but the filmmakers do not spoon feed the exposition to the audience the way a lot of Hollywood movies do.
Disc extras: The Blu-Ray release includes featurettes, image galleries, trailers, and TV spots.
Bottom Line: 1996’s Mission: Impossible kicked off one of the most successful and longest running action franchises in Hollywood history. But aside from what it spawned, this film is admirable in its own right with some masterful suspense sequence and a story that balanced action cinema thrills with spy movie intrigue.
Episode: #1049 (May 25, 2025)