_**Well done spy/caper thriller with Tom Cruise and an eye-rolling Scooby-Doo element**_

The Impossible Missions Force has a mission at a Prague gala concerning a CIA non-official cover list, but it doesn’t go as planned. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and Clair Phelps (Emmanuelle Béart) then team-up with two disavowed agents (Ving Rhames and Jean Reno) to steal the real NOC list at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, before going to London for further thrills involving the TGV train to Paris. Jon Voight and Henry Czerny are on hand as leaders of IMF while Vanessa Redgrave plays an arms dealer and Kristin Scott Thomas an IMF agent.

“Mission: Impossible” (1996) was loosely inspired by the TV series of the late 60s/early 70s and started the successful movie franchise starring Cruise. Expect convoluted dialogues, espionage gadgets, high society galas, foggy cobblestone streets, sudden deaths, globetrotting, double agents, capers and mind-blowing action.

One thing that turned me off was the several occasions where a person’s fake face is torn off à la Scooby-Doo. Once would’ve been enough, but three times? What were the writers thinking? Other than that cavil, this is a quality spy/caper flick; it’s just too tortuous for my tastes with not enough human interest.

The film runs 1 hour, 50 minutes, and was shot in Prague; London, Pinewood Studios & various other areas in England; and McLean, Virginia, & Washington DC.

GRADE: B-

While the sequences that _Mission: Impossible_ is most famous for (the ceiling-descent and train-top) are truly thrilling, absolutely everything in between these scenes is obvious and uninspired. Rarely can a movie have you so completely engaged one minute, and then immediately back to checking the time the next.

An important film, pop-culturally speaking, but not a very good one.

_Final rating:★★ - Had some things that appeal to me, but a poor finished product._

When I first saw this movie I did not like it at all. My main gripe with the movie was (and is) that it did not feel like a Mission Impossible movie.

Spoilers ahead! In the original series the team always succeeded, at least in the episodes I watched. However, the movie starts off with a big failure. Then to make matters worse we learn that Mr. Phelps, one of the original lead characters, is actually a traitor. I was so disappointed!

Now when I watched it for the second time with my son I actually liked it a lot more. I still think it is sad that the script writers felt they had to introduce all these chock elements but trying to look past those this is a pretty good movie. I still do not think it is truly a Mission Impossible movie in the good old style of the series though.

It is a very good action/thriller movie though. Tom Cruise is really not bad in the role of Ethan Hunt and so are the rest of the actors. He is performing quite a few spectacular stunts and there are a decent amount of high tech stuff in the movie. Sure, some of the stunts and action scenes are perhaps a bit convoluted but it provides for some good cinemagic and it is fiction after all.

If this movie would not have been labelled Mission Impossible I would probably have given it another star but I cannot bring myself to completely overlook how far from the original inspiration it has strayed.

The Cold War is over, but the Impossible Mission Force is still doing what it does best: planning elaborate capers and pulling off hair-raising heists in the name of patriotism. Things have changed, of course, and _Mission: Impossible_ uses this notion to play off our expectations from the TV series of the same name.

Things start off normally enough. Well, normal for the IMF, at least. Our specialized spies are fooling everyone with their schemes, but not, as you would expect, without things going awry and creating suspense. However, when things go wrong this time around, they go really, horribly, wrong. And, this time, the problem might not be with the not quite foolproof plan. The problem might not even be enemy action. The real problem just might be that our heroes are every last bit as deceptive as they've been portrayed.

Things are rarely as they seem in Brian de Palma's films, but things do usually seem very pretty. The European settings appear elegant, baroque, and sinister all at once. Saturated colors pop out of shadowy environments. Cameras move through walls, on occasion, disorient us with odd angles, when necessary, and transform the exotic into the surreal, just before next plot twist.

But, just like the IMF's plans, or personnel, this move isn't as flawless as it might like to be. The villain's motives seem a little trite, even for someone who's been backstabbing people for decades, and the final stunt goes far enough over-the-top that the filmmakers realized they'd need to throw the audience a wink after things finally stop flying around.

All in all, however, the film does what it set out to do. It creates suspense, startles us with pyrotechnics, and turns the TV show's convoluted tropes inside out.

Man, when this came out I was thinking that we are going to have another James Bond franchise only with an American and I was super stoked about it.

Unfortunately I got my wish. This is really the only one worth watching and M:I2 just destroyed the series that didn't have the sense to die.

But....what you have here is 3 Days of the Condor, directed by De Palma, with lots of action.

No, I'm not joking, it's really 3 Days of the Condor with less plot and tension and more action and shooting. And Cruise instead of Redford, which actually is a pretty even swap from one generation to another...only Redford is still the better actor and Cruise only really acts when he wants to.

So, yeah, if you saw 3 Days of the Condor you know what is going on. Just make it international, push up the RPMs, add a soundtrack by 1/2 of U2 and you have Mission:Impossible.

But, despite that, it's really fun and enjoyable.