I Watch Films: Mission: Impossible

 

Mission: Impossible (1996)

Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) and his Mission: Impossible team go to Prague where they infiltrate the American embassy to stop a rogue agent from stealing the CIA’s NOC list, a list of spies. It goes wrong, the rogue agent is killed, as are the other agents one by one, seen and heard by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) through various video and audio channels, also some in person. Hunt calls this in and is debriefed by IMF (Impossible Mission Force) secretary Kitteridge who is mysteriously already in Prague. It turns out there was a second IMF team; the mission was a trap to find an IMF mole and Hunt is now the prime suspect. The mole worked for a mysterious arms dealer called Max on an operation named Job 314. Hunt refuses to be taken in and escapes, destroying the restaurant (which was built out of fish tanks).

Hunt figures out Job 314 is a bible verse and leaves messages in online bible discussion sites. Then Claire (Emmanuelle Beart), another agent and Jim Phelps’ wife, arrives in the safe house. Jim, warning her they were compromised, had arranged for her to fake her death if needed. Hunt contacts Max (Vanessa Redgrave), arranges a meeting and then warns her that the NOC list she’s been told has a tracker, gaining her trust by getting her away before a team storms her hideout.

Hunt offers a genuine, clean NOC list for $10 million and Job’s identity. This is kept in a secure, unhackable computer isolated in the CIA HQ in Langley Virginia. Hunt and Claire recruit two former, disavowed agents, hacker Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and helicopter pilot Franz Kreiger (Jean Reno). They break into the unbreakable vault and hack the unhackable computer, then head for a safe house in London (above Liverpool Street station for some reason). Kittridge has Hunt’s aunt and uncle arrested on trumped up charges.

Learning about this Hunt calls from a payphone in Liverpool Street Station allowing IMF to track him to London. Then Jim Phelps reappears, claiming to have survived Prague and that Kittridge is the mole. Hunt knows this isn’t true due to a bible that Phelps left behind, but has to prove it. He arranges for the NOC list handover to be on the channel tunnel train, getting all the characters onto one train for a finale.

A stylish if dated thriller, mostly about the twists and turns, the tricks where people think one thing is happening but another is actually. A couple of times we, the audience are in on the trick, more often we are being tricked as well. The technology and some of the stunts are a little dated, the more practical the action and effects, the more the quality shines through.

Watch This: Excellent 90s action thriller that kicked off the 8 film franchise
Don’t Watch This: People lie, cheat, steal, blow things up, never sure who is doing what