Mission: Impossible (film)

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Mission: Impossible is an action movie released in 1996. It was directed by Brian De Palma and starred Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt. The movie was the third highest grossing of the year. It is the first movie based on the television series Mission: Impossible and was followed by two sequels, Mission: Impossible II (2000) and Mission: Impossible III (2006).

Plot

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is an agent of an Impossible Missions Force (IMF) team, an unofficial branch of the CIA, led by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight). The team assembles for a mission in Prague to prevent an American diplomat from selling the Non-official cover (NOC) list - a comprehensive list of all covert agents in Eastern Europe. The mission goes inextricably wrong, resulting in the deaths of the entire team, leaving Hunt the sole survivor. Fleeing the scene, Hunt meets with Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), the CIA-based director of the IMF, at a café. Hunt, very much in shock, is disturbed to learn from Kittridge that a mole, codenamed Job, has infiltrated the IMF, and that the Prague operation was meant to ferret Job out by allowing him to acquire the NOC list and attempt to sell it to Max, an illegal arms dealer known for corrupting IMF agents. The NOC list in Prague was fake, the real list being held in CIA headquarters in Virginia. With Hunt the sole survivor, the CIA believes he is the mole. Hunt realizes this, and mounts a daring escape from the café, fleeing into Prague.

Ethan returns to the IMF safe house, where he discovers fellow IMF agent Claire Phelps (Emmanuelle Béart), Jim Phelps's wife, actually survived the mission. Ethan begins correspondence with "Max" (Vanessa Redgrave), explaining that the NOC list was a fake and offering to deliver the real NOC list in exchange for the identity of the mole. Max agrees to the deal and offers Ethan a cash advance, which Ethan uses to assemble a team of blacklisted or disavowed intelligence agents, including computer expert Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and pilot Franz Krieger (Jean Reno). The new team infiltrates the heavily fortified headquarters of the CIA in Langley and successfully steals a copy of the full NOC list before escaping to a safe house in London. Once there, Hunt discovers that his uncle and mother have been falsely arrested for drug trafficking in an attempt to lure him out. This infuriates Hunt, and he contacts Kittridge, who offers to drop the false charges the moment Hunt surrenders to authorities. Hunt hangs up, after allowing Kittridge to trace him to the London area, turns around and walks right into Jim Phelps.

Phelps, presumed dead in the Prague operation, reveals that Kittridge is the mole and is tying up loose ends by trying to apprehend Hunt. Hunt reflects on this, while in reality piecing together the clues he discovered leading up to his operation and realizes that Phelps is the mole, Job. Hunt pretends to accept the story while being uncertain about Claire's place in the conspiracy. The next day, Max and Ethan arrange to meet aboard the TGV en route to Paris, with Claire and Luther aboard to provide backup. Kittridge is also aboard, having recently arrived in London and received tickets for the TGV and a video watch from Hunt. In the train, Ethan delivers the supposed NOC list to Max, who directs him to the luggage compartment to find his money, and Job. Max then attempts to transmit the NOC list to a server, an operation hindered by Luther, who activates a jamming device to prevent the upload. Claire, observing Kittridge's presence aboard the train, vacates her seat and meets with Phelps in the luggage car, confirming her part in the conspiracy. A silent "Phelps" slowly peels away his mask, revealing himself as Ethan. Suddenly, the real Phelps appears, armed and demanding the NOC list money. Ethan surrenders it before pulling out a pair of glasses. He slides them over his eyes, activating the camera inside and transmitting Phelps's image to Kittridge, proving beyond doubt that Phelps is still alive.

Phelps, now revealed as the traitor, shoots Claire in anger when she speaks against killing Ethan. He then beats Ethan down before escaping to the roof of the train, where Krieger, also a traitor, waits to extract him with a helicopter. Ethan recovers and follows Phelps, impeding his efforts to escape and tethering Krieger's helicopter to the train as it heads into the Channel Tunnel. The two fight atop the wind-swept train before Phelps disconnects the helicopter from the train and attempts to escape. Ethan follows, leaping onto the helicopter's landing skids and attaching explosives to the windshield. The ensuing explosion kills Phelps and Krieger, with Ethan narrowly escaping. Kittridge, now in possession of the NOC list and Max's true identity, drops his investigation against Ethan, who resigns from the IMF, and reinstates Luther as an IMF agent. As Ethan flies home, a flight attendant approaches him and through a coded phrase asks if he's ready for another mission.

Reaction

The movie was the third highest grosser at the box-office for the year. Despite the large revenues, the film was viciously attacked for being unfaithful to the original television series Mission: Impossible by focusing more on the star (and also producer) Tom Cruise's character Ethan Hunt rather than emphasizing teamwork. At the same time the film made the central character of the television series, Jim Phelps, a traitor in the CIA. The script was also vilified for being too complicated, a twist on the usual complaints that summer blockbusters are too lowbrow and simple. Some fans regard it as much more faithful than its immediate sequel Mission: Impossible II; however, the second sequel, Mission: Impossible III, was praised for its use of teamwork in various missions, a trait very much in line with the original series.

Some fans were under the impression that Tom Cruise was Jim Phelps, which would have shown how he moved up to leader of the IMF. It would have also kept in-line with the T.V. series as this "reboot" would have kept "Phelps" as the hero.

There are some fans who have repeatedly refused to recognize any of the films as being legitimate at all--they point out that in the series, Phelps discouraged marriages and even expelled Rollin Hand and Cinnamon Carter for having married secretly and only accepted Barney Collier, who had a wife and son, reluctantly; such a man would, himself, never have married.Box office

• Budget: $80,000,000
• Marketing cost: N/A
• Opening Weekend Gross (Domestic): $45,436,830
• Total Domestic Grosses: $180,981,886
• Total Overseas Grosses: $275,512,947
• Total Worldwide Grosses: $456,494,833

Theme song

During 1995, Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton were both spending time in New York City on a break from studio sessions with the rest of U2. It was during this time they recorded the theme to the blockbuster movie. The official movie soundtrack featured two versions of the title song, both of which were recorded by Mullen and Clayton. A single was released with additional remixes of these two tracks. The single and the soundtrack were released on U2's own Mother Records label in Europe, and on Island Records elsewhere. The song went to the top 10 on charts around the world, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance in 1997, and was a definite critical and commercial success. Mullen and Clayton were not involved with the soundtrack for the 2000 sequel to the movie.

Inaccuracies

• One sequence in the film takes place on the roof of a speeding train in open countryside. The train is identifiable as a French TGV. TGVs require overhead power cables to operate - they travel at too fast a speed to be powered by third rail technology - and they are clearly not present in the sequence; they would have prevented the helicopter sequence from taking place. During the same sequence the TGV enters the Channel Tunnel. However SNCF TGVs do not operate through the tunnel. High-speed rail services between London and Paris are operated by Eurostar using British Rail Class 373 trains, which are close relatives of the TGV. Also, the structure of the tunnel is incorrect as the actual Channel Tunnel is a system of three tunnels, not a single one as depicted. The train sequence was filmed on the Glasgow South Western Line in Scotland (hence the landscape not appearing much like Kent) using a normal British train with the image of the TGV overlaid using CGI, indeed in a few frames the real diesel locomotive at the front of the train is visible. In addition, the TGV is shown to be traveling on the right hand track of the two-track line, which may be inaccurate as both British and French railways operate on the left hand side under normal circumstances. However, trackwork or other problems may require a train to operate on the 'wrong' side, making this scene in the movie only a potential inaccuracy.

Trivia

• Peter Graves, who played James Phelps in the original series, declined to reprise his role in the movie after learning his character was to die as a traitor at the film's conclusion. For this reason alone, some fans have refused to accept that the real Phelps was ever even involved in the film.
• While filming the famous scene in which Tom Cruise drops from the ceiling and hovers inches above the ground, Cruise's head kept hitting the floor until he got the idea to put coins in his shoes for balance.
• It was the first film to be shown simultaneously at over 3,000 theatres in the United States.
• Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton of U2 wrote the remix of the theme song for this movie, but all of U2 has been given credit by the public. The film version was also changed to a 4/4 time signature as opposed to composer Lalo Schifrin's less commonly used (in pop music) 5/4.
• Apple Computer paid millions of dollars in return for a Macintosh Computer to be featured in the film. To their dismay, it was shown with a 1980-style DOS interface.
• Alan Silvestri was originally hired to compose the film's score and had recorded roughly 30 minutes of music before being replaced by Danny Elfman. A bootleg of Silvestri's partial score has since surfaced, and the composer later recycled some of this unused material for his score to Eraser.
• The "diskettes" featured in the movie are actually 230 MB 3.5" magneto-optical disks.
• The scene in which Tom Cruise was hanging from the ceiling in the white room was parodied in the Father Ted Christmas special in 1996, (A Christmassy Ted), as well as the 1998 comedy film Wrongfully Accused then again with the 2004 comedy Shrek 2.

External links

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Last updated on Tuesday March 11, 2008 at 13:14:03 PDT (GMT -0700)
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