Genre: Action & Adventure    Year: 1996    Country:
IMDB Rating: 4.0 (187 votes)
Director:    Studio: CRUISE,TOM
Starring: Emmanuelle Béart, Andrzej Borkowski, Ion Caramitru, Henry Czerny, Garick Hagon
Summary: A flashy, splashy summer-movie blockbuster that's fun and exciting without being mindless? That's the impossible mission accomplished by director Brian De Palma, star-coproducer Tom Cruise, and the crack team of "Mission: Impossible". Based on the '60s TV show and an almost impenetrably complex (but nonetheless thrilling) original story by David Koepp ("Jurassic Park") and Steven Zaillian ("Schindler's List"), with a screenplay by Koepp and Robert Towne ("Chinatown", "Shampoo"), "Mission: Impossible" begins with veteran agent Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) and his expert crew embarking on a mission that goes horribly, horribly wrong. But nothing is what it seems. The nail-biting set piece--always a signature of director De Palma ("Carrie", "The Untouchables")--in which Cruise is lowered from the ceiling to retrieve information from a computer in a high-security vault--is an instant classic. But perhaps even more impressive, at least in retrospect, is a flashback sequence in which two characters attempt to reconstruct a series of events from multiple points of view. It's pretty daring and sophisticated stuff for a big-budget spy movie, but brains were always what put the "Mission: Impossible" team ahead of the competition, anyway, no? "--Jim Emerson"