Director: John Woo
Cast: Tom Cruise, Dougray Scott, Thandie Newton, Ving Rhames
Have I Seen it Before: Yeah.
Did I Like It: The Mission: Impossible series is improbably after twenty-five years of featuring Tom Cruise tempting death by jumping and hanging off things.
But it hasn’t always been that way. I have always had a soft spot for <Mission: Impossible (1996)>, but completely understand when others say the plot is overly complex at best, downright convoluted at worst. Trying to course correct for that criticism, we are then offered this film.
All the ingredients are right. Tom Cruise—for all of his problems—has never appeared disinterested in making good movies. John Woo was at the peak of his action filmmaking, and had even proven his aptitude with more American fare like Hard Target (1993), Broken Arrow (1996), and Face/Off (1997). Certainly not intellectual fare, but crowd pleasing. He may have been the wrong choice for this series, but the thought that he wouldn’t generate some degree of memorable spectacle was a good idea, on paper.
But nothing quite came together, one assumes in the hopes of offering up counter programming to its predecessor. It probably doesn’t help that the whole film centers around preventing a super flu outbreak, which today feels off, but I don’t think my opinion of the movie has changed much at all in the last twenty years.
Cruise has two modes throughout the film: smirking and concerned smirking. Maybe he was looking for a break after the marathon production that was Eyes Wide Shut (1999), but he’s rusty as a movie star here. The plot is warmed over Hitchcockian jewel thief material. The story is credited to Star Trek scribes Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga, but I always seem to remember that eventually credited screenwriter Robert Towne saying he cribbed the whole thing directly from Notorious (1946), but a quick search now indicates they came up with action sequences first, and Towne was later called in to string together a story. Not sure if this is patient zero for this practice, but that kind of screenwriting is happening more and more lately, and for my money it is the key problem in action films today.
This one just didn’t come together in any way, sadly. But don’t worry, the series—nor Cruise—has made a stinker since. One wishes that I could say the same about Woo (he hasn’t made much in the last twenty years), and poor Dougray Scott was right on the precipice of having Hugh Jackman’s life, but for this film.