Mission Impossible

Mission: Impossible (1996)

Directed by: Brian de Palma
Written by: David Koepp and Robert Towne, based on the television series created by Bruce Gellar
Starring: Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Beart, Henry Czerny, Jean Reno, Ving Rhames, Vanessa Redgrave, Dale Dye, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Marcel Iures, Ion Caramitru, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Valentina Yakunina, Marek Vasut

The first of many impossible missions, this was criticized for having a ridiculously incomprehensible plot. Allow me to simplify it:

This team of secret agents is sent to stop this dude from stealing this list (okay, I can't remember the significance of the list. I think it had all the real names of all the spies or something). But anyway, they all get killed except for little Tommy and the leader's sexy wife. Because they are the only survivors, the governments assumes that they killed the rest of the team. SO Tom meets up with this arms dealer (or something) who wants the list and knows the identity of the mole who killed Tom's team and set him up and decides to make a trade. With the help of Jean Reno and Ving Rhames (and said sexy wife) he breaks into C.I.A. headquarters and hangs from the ceiling for a while so that he can foil the many security devices and steal the list. The NOC List (I thought they were saying Nautilus and that it was a submarine. I was pretty confused there). Only then does it turn out that the leader of the team was the real mole and that he survived and that he's working with Jean Reno and that together they killed all the other people in the team and that he's going to kill Tom. Gasp. Spoilers. And then some more stuff happens. Action and crap like that.

Wow, that was clarifying, wasn't it? Anyway, it was basically just a rip off of James Bond, but without any real sense of humour. I prefer Bond for the most part, but this was okay. I didn't mind Mr. Cruise too very much, which is impressive.

I just didn't care. I don't care about Bond either, but Bond is fluff and it knows it. But it had lots of action to keep me amused and/or entertained.

And I just can't get enough of that Jean Reno. He's so cool. I love him. He's my hero. Okay, so he was evil in this (a little unusual, isn't it?), but he's still my hero.

Anyway, as action movies go, it's pretty good, I should say.

END