Classic Movie Review: Mission: Impossible (1996)

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it..."

I really love the first Mission: Impossible movie, like really love it. All the action movie franchises of the 90s were sequels from the 80s, like Die Harder, Lethal Weapon 3 and Predator 2. But Mission: Impossible came along and made an original and exciting splash.

On a quiet night in Prague, Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) is leading his deep cover team of IMF (Impossible Missions Force, a secret team within the CIA) agents to entrap a terrorist who wishes to steal and sell a list of every known deep cover agent of the CIA. After this goes wrong and nearly every team member dies, the lone survivor of the group, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) comes in for a debrief with IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny). Little does he know, that the mission was just to find out who the mole was in the organisation and he is now the prime suspect. Now a disavowed agent, Hunt must clear his name by finding the actual mole and is joined by disavowed agents Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Franz Krieger (Jean Reno), as well as Phelps wife Claire (Emmanuelle Béart).

I don't think I can explain how much I love this movie. I love it even more than that other ultimate 90s action movie Goldeneye. That's an even more blasphemous claim when you learn how much I love James Bond (just you wait for the 48 hour/24 Bond challenge). But the reason I love it is that it is so exciting. The pacing is so fast and it is well written. Brian De Palma (who also directed another of my favourites, Scarface) makes the story semi-believable, which is important for a blockbuster action movie because none of the action movies of today make much sense.

The film also employs tension perfectly. Take for example the famous vault scene, which uses no sound. This is because the vault that they are breaking into has sound sensors (it makes sense if you watch the whole movie, trust me). Other tense scenes are when Ethan figures out the mole and when the mole is finally revealed.

But that's the one problem I have with this movie. If you've seen it before (like I have, many times since it came out), is that if you know who the bad guy is, the opening sequence kind of ruins the revelation at the end. But this is one tiny problem I have because this movie is all about the journey to get to the end and the action climax at the end is still pretty exciting to watch. But then again, if you're not a fan of old school CGI, it might feel a tiny bit cheesy (it still works for me!).

I think the reason I like this movie so much is due to Ethan Hunt being such a likeable character and that is something that Tom Cruise really has going for him. His boyish charm comes through in this movie (even if you think he's weird because of the Scientology). All the actors in this movie give top notch performances though. Vanessa Redgrave has just the right amount of menace as international arms dealer Max, Emmanuelle Béart is good as Hunt's sidekick (although as the movies progress the characters turn into the same idea as a Bond girl). Both Ving Rhames and Jean Reno are fantastic as the disavowed agents. But the real star is Emilio Estevez at the start of the film, who I am so disappointed isn't in any of the others.

Now I've mentioned James Bond a couple of times in this review and thats because Mission: Impossible is sort of a mid-90s Hollywood response to the dominance of Bond in the thirty years prior to this film. And while it doesn't knock James Bond of his throne, it is still a super exciting movie. If I would give this movie five stars if I could.

Foxcatcher

I feel as though the latest run of biopic films has culminated with this film. And although Foxcatcher is a biopic that chronicles the relationship between Olympic wrestler Mark Shultz and billionaire industrialist John du Pont, I feel it also is a snapshot into the wrestling world of the late 1980s.

Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is trying to make ends meet speaking at schools across America, but still lives in the shadow of his older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo). One day, Mark gets a phone call from the estate of John du Pont (Steve Carrell), the heir to the du Pont family fortune, to come and discuss leading a wrestling team that John wants to set up. Mark agrees and is hoping to win gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. As time progresses, du Pont's behaviour starts to display signs of madness.

This film is a marvel of direction. Bennett Miller knows how to use his actors properly and is amazing at making beautiful and evocative shots. Many times throughout the film when there is great stress happening on screen, the sound drops away to emphasise the powerful images that are being presented to us, a technique which I have always loved.

Like American Sniper, Foxcatcher is a patriotic film. This patriotism, however, is laced with a certain cynicism, with du Pont manipulating other people's sense of nationalism to his own ends. The film also gives a more detailed look into competitive wrestling than I have witnessed before. Since I only learn about the world through movies, my only real exposure had been through scenes in The World According to Garp or Born On the Fourth of July, but here I was exposed to the raw physicality of the sport. There is a jaw dropping scene at the beginning of the film where Tatum and Ruffalo are training together and you can sense the unspoken power struggle between the two. 

This film has some truly transformative performances. Channing Tatum's Mark Schultz isn't the brightest human around and Tatum somehow makes the guy endearing, despite the fact that the character can be slightly one-dimensional at times. Carrell is engaging as du Pont and the movie really shows how charming he was. I was a bit disappointed that Miller didn't make it as clear that he was a paranoid schizophrenic, but Carrell does portray the creepiness to his character well. Mark Ruffalo gives probably my favourite performance of the whole movie as Dave and he really does show how versatile an actor he is here.

Overall, Foxcatcher is a superb movie that despite having some minor problems, I felt that Vanessa Redgrave and Sienna Miller's characters could have been used and explored more and the ending is a tiny bit historically inaccurate, but that's okay given the run time of the film, it is definitely a movie people should watch.