MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
A film review by Serdar Yegulalp
Copyright 1997 Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: Miles better than the lackluster GOLDENEYE, but oh what a tangled plot they weave when they recreate TV. Entertainment by proxy?
Advance posters for MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE showed Tom Cruise's hawklike profile with the words EXPECT THE IMPOSSIBLE. I was all set to expect the impossible: a smart, engaging thriller from the Hollywood TV recycle bin. They got it halfway right. M:I is a thriller, and it is occasionally smart, but it's more confusing then engaging and bears an in-name-only resemblance to the TV show it was cribbed from.
The TV show, for those of us who were still a twinkle in Dad's eye when it aired, featured a gang of top-secret government agents who go on one mission of derring-do after another. It was another of TV's many attempts to cash in on the James Bond franchise and also echoed the greater sense of trust people had in institutions of "law and order" in those days. The M:I movie seems to have been dragged into the '90s without much real thought as to how faintly absurd it seems now. In fact, in one scene, there's a TV interview with a Senator who expresses grave doubts over just what the government is doing with its "black operations" funds. In the '60s, Mr. Phelps would probably have walked in and set the man straight with a We're Trying To Keep Your Country Safe speech. In the '90s, the audience was ready to chime in with "You said it, brother!"
Suffice to say the material feels dated from the git-go. How has it been re-worked? The usual Hollywood Hi-Tech Injection has been applied to the movie: explosions, guns, chases, violence, gadgets, gizmos, and totally inaccurate and absurd uses of computers and the Internet abound in this movie. There isn't a moment where anything that's happening is remotely plausible, but it's filmed well, and paced nicely -- even if half of what we see is an invitation to guffaw in contempt.
What about Tom Cruise? Tom Cruise is an excellent actor and he turns in fine work here, but the basic idea of the story was never about an Angry Young Rebel. The original IMF people were team players. The movie turns quickly into a Cruise solo vehicle and does away with the "problem" of team dynamics by having the rest of Cruise's team killed off quickly. A-ha.
I mentioned guffawing in contempt. See if you can follow this -- if you're reading this message, there's a good chance you're Net-literate. Early in the movie, Cruise's character sends email to someone named "John@3:14". What's wrong with *this* picture? Or what about the CIA computer room which has every kind of detector EXCEPT a motion sensor. Why? Because if there WAS a motion sensor in the room, there would be no reason to break in and give us a flashy scene of Cruise hanging by wires and hacking into a mainframe upside-down. I'm not even going to try to criticize the final chase, which breaks the laws of physics at an insane rate and ultimately turns into a kind of exhibition house for many of director Brian de Palma's favorite fetishes.
So what have we got here? A loud, overly complicated, flashy, not-very-interesting movie that has all the lasting strength of a caffeine jolt, and had me giggling in all the wrong places.
Two out of four television glasses.
syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei http://www.io.com/~syegul another worldly device...
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