Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Sadly Over-hyped

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I went back and watched this movie after seeing the most recent three M:I films. That certainly puts me at a strange perspective, since I saw the movies out of order and this one more than twenty years after it was released. No doubt, I have been spoiled by the excellent improvements in special effects and stunt execution in movies of the past 20 years. Going back to watch the old one is a step down in some respects. But, I was delighted to find how well this movie holds up. The action sequences and special effects still look excellent, and the thrills and suspense have stood the test of time.A lot of credit needs to go to director Brian De Palma. He makes this movie very much about style and momentum. The alluring vibe is the movie's strength, and it definitely takes the focus. This is only borderline an action movie. It's more of a cool spy thriller. Ethan Hunt has not yet become the famous super spy that we know in later films. Here he is very much a part of a team. At first, he is presented merely a grunt work man. His smirk and cocky jokes suggest that he doesn't take the matters all that seriously.Throughout the film, he slowly reveals himself to be sharp, acutely aware of his surroundings and smarter than everyone else in the room. Not until the third act do we fully realize how stellar Hunt is at this work. He figures out who set him up and how they did it, which is a miracle because this plot is largely incomprehensible. Ethan Hunt may be the only person in the movie or watching the movie to understand what the heck is going on. There are so many betrayals and double crosses that it's nearly impossible to know which characters are working together. And yet, the film still works. Viewers will eventually understand who is the hero and who he must defeat to save the lives of many innocents. Understanding the plot on that level, is all you really need.This movie seems to have improved with age, and I imagine the critic scores would improve upon a re-watch. It's worth your time.

Famous director brian de Palma presents us a great movie with Tom Cruise, Jon Voight and Emmanuelle Béart performances

It's hard to believe that Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible is now 22 years old. What's even harder to believe is the fact that this franchise is still going, and stronger than ever, with the sixth entry into the series, Mission: Impossible: Fallout, about to be released this very week. Despite some wobbles since, the series got off to a very strong start in the hands of De Palma who, while pissing off a few hardcore fans of the original television show with some bold character decisions, delivered a thriller that really set the heart racing. It's also aged incredibly well. While the gizmos now seem somewhat dated (the McGuffin is a floppy disk), there was always an old-fashioned broodiness about the film that has given it a timeless quality. Of course, it's all just an excuse to make Tom Cruise run, and run he certainly does.Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) and his Impossible Mission Force (IMF) are on a mission in Prague to retrieve a list of secret agents' real identities. The mission goes awry, with most of the team (which also consists of Emmanuelle Beart, Kristin Scott Thomas and Emilio Estevez) winding up dead, leaving only Ethan Hunt (Cruise) to figure out what the hell just happened. With Hunt the only survivor, IMF director Kittridge (Henry Czerny) suspects him to be the mole within the agency he has been trying to smoke out for years. Hunt flees to try and uncover the mole himself, finding a lead in the mysterious Max, a contact the mole had been communicating with using passages from the Bible. Finding himself disavowed by the government and without a team to help him, Hunt starts recruiting, finding a brand new team in fellow disavowed agents Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Franz Krieger (Jean Reno). Their first mission is to break into the CIA headquarters in Langley and steal back the list, in the hope of finding the rat and proving Hunt's innocence.There are three key set-pieces in Mission: Impossible that perhaps no other director is better suited for. De Palma is the master of long, tension-building moments of suspense, and Hunt's infiltration of the CIA is an iconic moment for good reason. He must enter into a room from above, copy a file while dangling from a wire, and exit within a set time. Any noise above a certain decibel level will trigger an alarm and cause a total lockdown, as will any additional weight on the floor. Filmed in complete silence, it's a masterfully choreographed sequence. As a trickle of sweat makes its way to the rim of Hunt's glasses, you won't exhale until it's all over. De Palma is better known for leaning of Hitchcockian influences, but his approach here is more Jules Dassin. There are other exciting moments too, and thank God, as the plot is about as baffling as its lead stars affiliation with Scientology. The thrills also distract from some pacing issues, which normally arise when Hunt is left to mope around in a hotel room, and some revelations you can see coming from a mile off (the shifty, knife-wielding Frenchman is a baddie, really?). Mission: Impossible really only has its momentum, so it's best just to strap in and go with it.

Mission Impossible (3 out of 5 stars).Mission Impossible is a decent action spy film. Yes, it is a great start for a franchise based on a tv series. I did find this film to be quite boring and slow at times. The plot was all over the place and had a couple of twists that is not surprising. It had a couple of action sequences like an infiltration scene were Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is dangling from the ceiling in a high security room. And the climatic bullet train scene were Tom Cruise is chasing the bad guy on top of the train. Which can be breathtaking. But otherwise, the film suffers from poor editing and pacing issues. The plot follows Ethan Hunt trying to find a mole in his team. After his team's mission was sabotaged and wiped out. He spends most of the movie in a safe room, looking at books, and trying to find traces of were the money that was setting him up. There is a couple of twists were good guys turned bad. Or bad guys turned good. It just suffered from poor pacing. There are a couple of action sequences. The climatic scene was the only exciting part of the movie. But it does take a long way to get there. Director Brian De Palma could have done the film a bit better. The characters were undeveloped. Jean Reno, Emmanuelle Beart, Henry Czerny, Ving Rhames, and Jon Voight could have all stuck out. But there characters were all flat. Tom Cruise was good playing the IMF agent. Overall, Mission Impossible is a fair film. It only had one exciting action sequence. The plot was dull and boring about them trying to find a mole in their agency and spend most of it in one room, the characters were forgettable, and Tom Cruise was the only good thing about the movie.