Mission: Impossible (1996)

I walked into this movie with really high expectations, thanks to the fantastic preview, the great pre-released music, and comments from my friends. Did it deliver? Not really. It was pretty good, but I had such high (and unrealistic) expectations for it that I was a bit disappointed.

With the introduction sequence and title graphics, the film started off like a TV show. There were two pretty good action sequences (the vault and the train), but that was about it. The rest of the movie was just a series of plot twists strung together. The James Bond-ish gadgetry was neat but didn’t make up for the lack of action. They didn’t even show Cruise shooting his gun, which he would look cool doing. And the scene on the plane was kind of neat, but the end of the film just didn’t seem to have the punctuation mark that I was yearning for.

Quite a few flaws that even escaped the watchful eye of De Palma. For such a well-protected computer vault, why no motion detector? It would work better than a temperature sensor (which could be beaten with a thermal suit and mask). And why wasn’t the computer software locked? I can lock stuff on my Mac, and I’m sure they can on a Cray-2 as well.

And how could they have made a big, expensive action movie with a young stud like Tom Cruise (who obviously has been working out for this role) without a sex scene? Just to preserve that R rating? The script called for at least a few smooches, and Cruise didn’t deliver. It certainly was nice to see Jean Reno back in action, though. He did a good job. He just has such a classic, goofy look in his eyes. It would have been great if someone from the original series had made a cameo appearance, but it didn’t happen. I think they goofed on that one.

I don’t like this trend of playing the multi-million dollar U2 them song (as they did in Batman Forever) for the first time when the credits start rolling at the end of the film and everyone leaves. Even in Goldeneye, all of the U2 was reserved for a “music video” at the beginning of the movie before it even started. The U2 movie music really IS good mood music that they could be using in the film. I just don’t get it.