Mission: Impossible

What’s the Story?

The big-screen MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE may not have the campy sensibility of its TV predecessor (which ran from 1966-1973), but it generates plenty of nail-biting suspense while capturing the overall spirit of the spy genre, complete with really cool high-tech gadgets. The setting is Prague, behind the old Iron Curtain, when the lives of Eastern European operatives are at risk. When a mission goes horribly wrong, secret agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is marked as a mole and hunted by the CIA. Now a fugitive, Hunt must track down the true double agent and a computer disk in order to clear his name.

Is It Any Good?

The Cold War may be over, but the spy genre is alive and well in Tom Cruise and director Brian De Palma's sometimes confusing and implausible thriller. Still, Mission Impossible has great sets, requisite turncoat agents, high tech espionage, and three thrilling action sequences that will keep action-crazy adolescents on the edge of their seats. The movie unfortunately foregoes plot coherence and plausibility in favor of sensationally shot break-ins and escapes. The CIA headquarters break-in, while exhilarating, is particularly dubious.

Mission Impossible certainly has a great opening, breaking the rules of the Hollywood thriller by (seemingly) killing off stars (Jon Voigt, Emilio Estevez, Kristin Scott Thomas) in the introductory sequence. De Palma also does a fine job of creating an atmosphere of suspicion; nobody with whom Tom Cruise comes into contact is completely trustworthy. And the action sequences -- in particular the helicopter in the Chunnel -- are some of the best Hollywood has to offer.