Mission: Rewatchable - 'Mission: Impossible'

Revisit the original 'Mission' in advance of 'The Final Reckoning.'

This essay was originally published in 2023, shortly before the release of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. With Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opening this week, it seemed like a good time to revisit it. Enjoy!

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One will be the third straight entry in the series to be directed and co-written by Christopher McQuarrie. McQuarrie is slated to directed Dead Reckoning Part Two as well, natch. And The Usual Suspects scribe has done a bang-up job thus far, so I don't begrudge star/producer Tom Cruise for repeatedly bringing him back (in fact, McQuarrie has become Cruise's go-to guy in the recent past - eight the actor's last ten projects were all co-written and/or directed by 'McQ.').

Having said that...

Once upon a time, each Mission: Impossible movie was directed by a completely different person from the others. And not just, like, some journeyman filmmaker in need of a paycheck - whatever else you wanna say about these directors, they're all auteurs. And they all seem to have been given a fairly reasonable amount of creative freedom, leaving their fingerprints all over their respective film. The only other major mega-budget franchise I can think of that did something similar for awhile is the Alien movies. It made each new movie in the series feel singular and exciting, and it gave you some stuff to chew on even if the finished product ended up being lackluster.

The first Mission: Impossible movie was helmed by the legendary Brian De Palma from a screenplay credited to David Koepp (who also wrote Carlito's Way and Snake Eyes for De Palma) and Robert Towne (Chinatown!!!) from a story by Koepp and Steve Zaillian (Schindler's List?!?!). And while it may have been a paycheck gig more than anything for the filmmaker, it is still VERY much a Brian De Palma movie. To such a degree, in fact, that I think it barely qualifies as an action film - until the grand finale, there's nary a punch thrown, guns are present routinely but fired rarely, the explosions are all of a reasonable size, and Cruise performs no Jackie Chan-level stunts. I have to imagine if they handed this movie into the studio today, all the executives would collectively shit their pants and hire a different director to do reshoots.

Case in point: The movie's big opening pre-credits set piece all takes place in a room and features neither combat nor moving vehicles nor perilous heights. In fact, because this is, I said, very much a Brian De Palma film, most of it is actually a guy sitting at a desk watching events unfold on a black-and-white security monitor (the first shot of the movie is literally the monitor and the back of the guy's head). And the suspense in the sequence derives from the imperilment of a beautiful young woman, Claire (Emmanuelle Béart), of whom our hero, Ethan Hunt (Mr. Cruise), feels highly protective. These are, of course, all hallmarks of many of De Palma's best movies (Sisters, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, etc.), and even a lot of his not-best movies (Snake Eyes, Femme Fatale, Passion, etc).

And that's just the first three minutes of the movie! By the time we're done we'll have plenty of other De Palma touchstones, both aesthetically (split diopters, extended P.O.V. shots, stagey placement of seemingly-unimportant characters who go on to become important, and at least one long sequence with no dialogue) and thematically (governmental conspiracies, hubristic authority figures, unconsummated romantic relationships).

But there's two other aspects of this movie for which I don't think De Palma gets enough credit.

The first is - and I'm not being flip here - the movie's fast pace. It remains the shortest entry in the series at a mere 110 minutes. By way of contrast, Dead Reckoning is 163 minutes, and is evidently only half a story. Oppenheimer is only seventeen minutes longer.

The second is the thematic alignment of the MacGuffin. In many of these movies, the MacGuffin is just some random scary thing. In this flick, the MacGuffin is called the NOC (Non-Official Cover) List, and it reveals the identities of all the IMF's undercover operatives around the world. The guy who is trying to steal the list, we learn, is Ethan's mentor, Jim Phelps (Jon Voight); his wife, Claire (Béart), is also in on it. So it's a movie about people pretending to be other people trying to steal a list of people pretending to be other people. How anyone can not love De Palma is totally beyond me.

(Also, Ethan's undercover alias is shown in one quick shot to be 'Phillipe Douchette,' which tickles me.)

ANYWAY, the basic set-up here is that there's this governmental spy organization called the Impossible Mission Force, or IMF, for which all our primary characters works. Phelps sends Ethan, Claire, and the rest of their team undercover into a fancy shindig at the American embassy in Prague, where they're meant to catch this guy Alexander Golitsyn (Marcel Iures) stealing the NOC List. But instead shit goes totally wrong; not only is Golitsyn killed, but (seemingly) so is every member of the team save for Ethan, and an unidentified third party gets away with the list.

The idea, clearly, is for this initial mission to be a fake-out - you're not meant to expect Ethan's entire team to get wiped out so quickly. For example, if you watch the original trailer for the movie, they made it look like Emilio Estevez was going to play a much larger role than he does:

I don't think the gambit quite works as well it has in some other movies, because the soon-to-be-deceased characters are neither memorably colorful nor played by famous-enough actors (in 1996, Estevez and Voight's careers weren't exactly in tip-top shape, Kristin Scott Thomas was still a year away from her breakthrough role in The English Patient, nobody outside of France had heard of Béart, and to this day nobody anywhere has heard of Ingeborga Dapkunaite). Apparently, these roles were initially offered to members of the cast from the original Mission: Impossible television show, and they all turned it down because they didn't wanna be unceremoniously murdered right away. I don't know if that would have worked better - the show had already been off the air for 20+ years at that point, and no one was exactly expecting a big summer tentpole movie to star Martin Landau. But I understand the thought process.

So after everyone else is killed, Ethan goes to meet up with one of his IMF superiors, Kittredge (Henry Czerny, ostensibly reprising his role as a governmental hard-ass from Clear and Present Danger two years prior). It turns out the entire operation was a mole hunt to root out a double-agent who has been working with an arms dealer known only as 'Max' - the list, in fact, was a fake. And since Ethan appears to be the last person standing, Kittredge assumes he's the mole. Ethan evades arrest by using explosive bubblegum to murder dozens of innocent fish (this might actually be Cruise's biggest stunt in the movie, which, again, really reminds you how different things were thirty years ago).

Then he flees back to his team's safe house, where he starts packing up his shit and getting ready to go on the lam, but then he decides to try and get in touch with this Max person instead. I'm not really clear on why Ethan assumes Kittredge doesn't know about the safe house - it seems to me that even going back there just to retrieve his things is a risky move, let alone sitting there for hours and hours sending out e-mails.

One thing on which I am clear is this movie's portrayal of the Internet betrays the fact that it was made by a 56-year-old man in the mid-'90s. I don't care so much about the highly-stylized browser (Google wouldn't even be created for another two years), or even the fact that the director believed it was reasonable to assume there were only 126 Bible sites on the web. But man oh man, it is hilarious to see how De Palma believed e-mail works: In the 'To' field ,Ethan types 'Max@Job314,' which is not a complete e-mail address, and in the 'From' field, Ethan types 'Job,' which isn't even an incomplete e-mail address. Great stuff.

So Ethan is sitting there e-mailing potential Maxes and then Phelps comes stumbling in, still bleeding from the gunshot wound that killed him, and he's all "Ethan, I needed your help, you let me die!" and whatnot. De Palma doesn't play it close to the vest - you know Ethan is just having a nightmare pretty much the moment it begins. I think the scene exists mostly to a) create a dramatic transition from Ethan sending e-mails to Ethan finding out that Claire is still alive, and b) to add emotional stakes for Ethan, since they didn't really do anything at the beginning to establish Ethan's relationship with Phelps. Like, Ethan cracks wise about Phelps being sent on "cushy recruiting missions," and it's clear they like one another, but without this moment, it would be fair to assume that Ethan's sole motivation for seeking out Max was to clear his name. If Ethan feels guilty for what happened to Phelps then it makes things more impactful when Phelps turns up alive later.

Ethan comes out of the dream and realizes that Claire, and not Phelps, has entered the room. At first he's really suspicious of her, which both does and does not make any sense - his guard should be up right now, but again, WHY WERE YOU JUST SITTING THERE LIKE A SCHMUCK WAITING TO BE CAUGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE DUDE?!?!

Claire convinces Ethan that she's okay, mostly by being insanely beautiful and convincingly sad to learn that Phelps is dead. Look, I won't sugarcoat it: It took this franchise five movies to come up with a decent female character, but Claire really gets shafted here. I can't tell you anything about her other than that she's hot, she's French, and she finds Jon Voight pushing sixty to be attractive. She has no actual personality traits; in fact, re-watching the movie, I realized she barely has any lines. They imply that there are romantic vibes between her and Ethan, but if Ethan likes her for any reasons beyond the physical, it's never made clear. In the trailer, there's a shot of them furiously pawing at one another, but it's not in the finished film. I think if they did sleep together, it would certainly add even more tension to the finale... not that it would do anything to beef up Claire's character. Bond girls in movies that pre-date Roe v. Wade have more to do than Claire does.

ANYWAY, Ethan gets a reply from Max and goes to meet the weapons dealer, who turns out to be Vanessa Redgrave. Redgrave's part in this movie isn't huge, but it is delightful; years before the Internet wrote erotic fan fiction about Vin Diesel and Helen Mirren in the Fast and Furious movies, Tom Cruise and Vanessa Redgrave were being weirdly flirty with one another in Mission: Impossible. So after proving his bona fides to Max, Ethan makes a deal whereby he'll steal the real NOC List from the Pentagon in exchange for $10 million and introduction to whoever it is that killed his team in Prague.

So Ethan and Claire recruit some other disavowed IMF agents, Krieger (Jean Reno) and Luther (Ving Rhames), to help them with the Pentagon job. Luther is a hacker; Krieger is one of those "guys who can get things" that pop in movies so people can magically, y'know, get things. It occurred to me during this re-watch that this team would have been ideal for the fake out at the beginning. Reno and Rhames weren't huge, but they were both hired off the backs of very successful movies (The Professional and Pulp Fiction, respectively) that had brought them into the larger public consciouness. It really might have been surprising if they'd been killed right away.

The premise of the Pentagon heist is that the real NOC List exists only on a single computer with no Internet connection in a room that the designers of the Pentagon seem to have modeled on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Only one authorized person is allowed in the room (what this person actually does for a living is never made clear - he's shown sitting in front of the computer and typing, but is he updating the NOC List or...?). And there's an intense alarm system that goes on when that person isn't there - so Ethan and his team can't put any pressure on the floor, or make any noise, or even allow the temperature of the room to rise a single degree (by both way of example and foreshadowing, we see a drop of water from a cold sitting on a desk fall to the floor, and the alarm goes off).

This sequence is, inarguably, the highlight of the movie. To say that De Palma is in his element here would be a ridiculous understatement. He's riffing on the famous thirty-two minute break-in from Jules Dassin's Rififi, which also hinges on near-total silence. One of the fun things about heist movies is that because they're all about meticulous plans that inevitably go awry, they automatically make exposition exciting (which, I should not have to tell you, is rarely the case in most films). So De Palma gets to lay out all the pieces for the audience and then ratchet up the suspense by constantly threatening to gum up the works, often via dramatic irony: Ethan has to hang up above the only guy allowed in the room for several minutes, hoping the dude doesn't bother to look up, and Krieger, situated in a vent in the ceiling, is responsible for keeping Ethan suspended in mid-air, but he's struggling with Ethan's weight and oh hey wouldn't you know it here comes a rat. The latter bit leads to the infamous moment where Ethan is left hanging mere inches off the ground, trying desperately to keep his arms and legs from touching the floor. And then of course there's the single drop of sweat which slides off his glasses, and we know, via the exposition, has the ability to trigger the alarm. Ethan catches it, which we see only in close-up, because it makes no sense - there's no real way for Ethan to reposition one of his hands beneath him without touching the floor. But that's okay because it's a fun moment.

I do remember people saying they found this movie confusing when it was first released, and I think that's mostly because of what happens after the Pentagon heist. The gang goes back to their hideout. There's some bad vibes between Krieger and Ethan. In the course of their conflict, Krieger pushes a Bible Ethan took from the Prague safe house onto the ground. Once the disagreement has been resolved, Ethan picks the Bible up off the floor and sees that it came from The Drake Hotel in Chicago - which, he remembers via aural flashback, is where Phelps was staying during his last "cushy recruiting mission."

Not long after, Phelps turns up alive. He tells Ethan it was Kittredge who betrayed the team, and the things that Ethan says are tantamount to "Oh yeah I believe you that makes sense," but in the visual flashbacks we see him imagining, he knows the truth - that Phelps is the traitor, and that Krieger is also involved (Ethan recognizes Krieger's knife from the Pentagon job as the same kind of knife that killed Kristin Scott Thomas). Making matters more complicated, Ethan imagines scenarios in which Claire both is and is not also involved, because he of course wants to believe she's innocent (which, again, would make a lot more sense if they'd had an actual romance, but whatever).

Point being, I think a lot of audiences are not used to that kind of contrast in movies, and certainly, audiences coming to see a Tom Cruise summer popcorn movie are used to having information spoon-fed to them. I think people just did not understand why Ethan was saying one thing but they were being shown another.

Thing is, I personally never found De Palma's approach to this scene confusing, but I also can't really figure out what his thinking here was. There's a moment a couple of scenes later when they're on the train selling the list to Max where Claire finds Phelps and says some incriminating stuff and the Phelps rips off his mask, revealing he's really Ethan. That probably would have been a fine spot to let us know that Ethan has figured out what's really going on, but for some reason, De Palma wanted us to know sooner. Feel free to drop me a line if anyone can figure out a rationale here.

In any case, we're on the train soon enough, with multiple looming threats. Kittredge is on board, looking for Ethan. Luther is surreptitiously seated near Max, sabotaging the arms dealer's ability to upload the NOC List to the Internet. And Ethan is off sneaking around dealing with the Phelps, Claire, and Krieger of it all. That leads to a situation where Claire tries to talk Phelps out of killing Ethan, and then Phelps tries to shoot Ethan, and Claire takes the bullet and dies. This makes Ethan really mad, which, once more, does not make as much sense as it would have they actually slept together. Regardless, Phelps is now trying to make his getaway by leaping from the moving train to a helicopter piloted by Krieger (it's not clear how they were gonna get Claire out of there - maybe that was never the plan anyway?). And of course Ethan climbs up there and has a big fight with Phelps, which leads to both of them hanging off the helicopter, which leads to Ethan using the exploding gum again, which leads to the moment everyone remembers from the trailers in which Ethan leaps from the helicopter just as it explodes, sending him careening into the train, which then stops. The blown-up helicopter blade comes to rest right before it impales Ethan through the face. Kittdrege finds Max and Ethan and Luther's names are cleared and there's an implication that Ethan is going to be the new Phelps and the movie ends.

It's almost impossible (pardon) to defend this movie against accusations of style over substance. The story is thin and silly and the characters are one-dimensional and the whole thing is almost entirely without emotion.

But De Palma is too good at making suspense films to let this be a complete waste of time. It might be a minor work in his overall oeuvre, but it's one of which I think he can still be proud. If this was as bad as big summer blockbusters ever got, the world would be a less-irritating place.