Review of Mission Impossible (1971) by Harry W — 03 Oct 2015

Serving as the first in a series of many successful action vehicles for Tom Cruise, Mission: Impossible sounded like an exciting distraction.

The intro scene certainly defied expectations. After crediting many actors which includes prior Tom Cruise collaborator Emilio Esteves, Mission: Impossible kills them all off. This comes as a surprise and proves to be one of many plot twists that come from the film.

Attempting to mimic a neo-noir style, Brian De Palma diverts a detective-based story into a Tom Cruise vehicle and mimicks the visual style of one. With a dark aesthetic for its story as well as many characters dressed in suits and cinematography that uses iconic techniques of the genre to intensify the way the characters are captured, there is a mild sense of value that stems from the ambition for Mission: Impossible to be more than your standard action film. Unfortunately, when one gets everything else wrong there is no sense in boasting about an element which is of such limited value. The story in Mission: Impossible adheres to the neo-noir conventions as well with all kinds of twists and turns facing both sides of the law. And though the film attempts to pretend its some kind of James Bond piece with all kinds of technological props and occasional use of visual effects, it is actually just a very dull film.

Mission: Impossible has a generic story to it and no characters whatsoever, but a good action junkie can look past this in the case that the film succeeds as an action movie. The simple fact is that it doesn't. The entire film pretends that it has a narrative anyone cares about and obsesses over it to the point that it forgets about the need to put in a sensible quantity of action. Even though the action proves itself to have potential for some guilty fun, there is so little of it that the film cannot pass as succesful. Yet even more surprising is just how boring some of the action really proves to be. As it is, the entire scene where Ethan Hunt is suspended in the air by two strings takes too long to get anywhere and maintains no soundtrack the entire time. This is clearly attempting to capitalise on the intense nature of the silence, but in actual fact since the film has no concept of mood building whatsoever there is ultimately no predetermined tensity to do anything with. This should be the first cool scene in the film, but instead it is merely a lifeless series of visuals which failed to keep me awake while nothing action packed or intelligently written was able to serve as a distraction from all this. So Mission: Impossible has no great action movie and clearly too much of a challenge to be handled by Brian De Palma, more of a challenge than it is for the viewer to pretend to care about the story enough to actually keep up with it.

And to make matters worse, the soundtrack is notably poor. The musical score in Mission: Impossible has some brief moments of inspiration, but most of the time it is actually very faulty. Composed by Danny Elfman, the soundtrack cannot help but feel very much like it was done for one of the many cartoon's that the man has worked for. It has some moments which feel too cartoonish and lighthearted to actively seem like they have a valid place in the film. There are even segments that feel like they came from a 1950's adventure serial, actively degenerating the mood of the film to almost feeling cheesy in the face of a story that tries desperately to be legitimate. Believe me when I say that there is nothing legitimate about Mission: Impossible.

Now, I'm a man who tends to be very critical of Tom Cruise for delivering repetitive and unlikable characters to the screen. But concerning the poor production of Mission: Impossible, part of me actually felt sorry for him. Ethan Hunt is hardly any kind of character at all. He is such a shallow character that he lacks the convincing edge of an action hero even though Tom Cruise clearly has the energy to deliver on that, but what's really poor is that he has no hook to him. He isn't a legitimate character or a shallow action movie archetype, instead attempting to be a combination of both of them. This limits the amount of things that Tom Cruise can do with the role, and though it prevents him from incorporating in his stereotypically cocky demeanour which can be frustrating at times, the film actually made me miss it. Even when Tom Cruise is playing an unlikable stereotype, he at least has someone to play. In Mission Impossible despite the actor showing that he can remain very physically engaged during the more intense moments of the film, there is no script or atmosphere to back up his efforts and instead leave him delivering sporadic moments of spirit which may be enough to sustain fans of his though leaving the rest of the world to wallow in pity for the man.

Even Academy Award winner Jon Voigt has nothing to do in the film, instead falling into the pattern of portraying a dementia-ridden old man pretending to be some sort of super criminal. As unappealing as that sounds, it is actively less entertaining than my description.

The only cast members who really brought any value to the film for me were Ving Rhames and Jean Reno. And neither of those are due to the quality of their performances but rather the fact that I genuinely like the two of them to the point that I would welcome them in essentially any role, as well as the fact that their restrained performance at least have some slight sense of charm about them.

So Mission: Impossible has the potential to make something good out of Tom Cruise's dedication, but with a ridiculously convoluted plot filling in for a shortage of action scenes and no narrative or technical creativity to go along with it all, the film ends up being a slow and overblown thriller which lacks any sense of feeling whatsoever.