MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996)

The Impossibly Suspenseful First Chapter of the Action Series.

Grade: A

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With the Mission: Impossible film series seemingly wrapped up with The Final Reckoning (2025), it is interesting to look back on the franchise as a whole and see how far it has come since the first time Tom Cruise portrayed Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt back in 1996. Nowadays, the movies are famous for their endless supply of intense, over-the-top action sequences. But the first film has only one such moment, and it happens during the climax. This reviewer argues that 1996’s Mission: Impossible may be one of the best in the series not despite its lack of crazy action, but because of it.

            Based on the 1960s television series, Mission: Impossible opens with Ethan’s IMF team, led by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), being assigned to expose a traitor who is selling a classified document called the NOC List, which contains the names of undercover CIA field agents. As the team carries out their mission in Prague, they are murdered one after the other by an unseen enemy, leaving only Ethan alive. IMF Secretary Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) believes Ethan is responsible, forcing him to go into hiding. Determined to find the real traitor and clear his name, Ethan recruits his own team of disavowed agents and, in the film’s most famous scene, descends into a highly secure vault in the CIA Headquarters in Langley to retrieve the NOC List itself.

More casual viewers accustomed to the later entries, particularly Ghost Protocol (2011) onwards, may be put off by how different the first Mission: Impossible is. If it were more like those movies, we would have a global threat thrown into the mix, and Ethan would be fighting assassins left and right. But instead of his fists, he is forced to use his brain. That is one of the movie’s most successful traits: introducing us to this new character. Ethan Hunt has no counterpart in the show, and very little backstory (aside from some details about his family) is provided here. Thus, we have to learn about him through his actions and words, or lack thereof.

Completely cut off from his agency, Ethan is shown to be very resourceful and intelligent. He comes up with plans very quickly, such as one scene where he escapes Kittridge at a restaurant, and he easily picks up on minute clues which help him piece together what is really going on. But we are kept out of the loop, for a while at least, for how much he knows. Cruise delivers a truly impressive performance; while the later movies are able to survive on his athletic skills alone, here he lets his facial expressions contribute to the movie’s suspense.

And there is a lot of suspense in Mission: Impossible, courtesy of both the actors and the director, Brian De Palma. While the later movies rely heavily on nail-biting tension as Ethan and his team fight to save the day, things are much quieter here. The Langley heist is the most iconic example. Without any music whatsoever, the scene is allowed to take its time as Ethan is lowered into the vault and is nearly dropped while teammate Franz Krieger (Jean Reno) is forced to fight off a rat in the vent while holding onto Ethan. Thus, the slow burning tension throughout the film makes the hair-raising climax-in which Ethan struggles to stop the traitor from escaping atop a fast-moving train-all the more exciting.

Not everything about the movie holds up. Unsurprisingly, pretty much everything involving a computer is dated, as is some of the CGI in the train showdown. It also shouldn’t be too hard for modern viewers to guess who the mole is, and when their identity is revealed, it may anger diehard fans of the TV show (it was certainly problematic for the actor who originally portrayed them). Even the break-in at Langley, despite being amazingly put together, doesn’t seem nearly as impossible today as it did back then. But these are all minor issues that are caused more by the passage of time than mistakes by the filmmakers.

It probably goes without saying that this is the most grounded entry in the series. There are no insane plots to destroy world order, and no megalomaniacal villains or A.I. Ethan himself feels like a real person; his death-defying nature is not seen until the climax, and even then, he is struggling more than he would in the later movies. This realistic tone and introduction to the protagonist enables viewers to ease into the series’ more over-the-top elements, as well as create incredible stakes to the story. That is why Mission: Impossible works both as a thrilling spy caper and the beginning of one of the greatest action franchises of all time.

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Director: Brian De Palma

Producers: Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner

Screenplay: David Koepp, Robert Towne (Based on the television series created by Bruce Geller)

Cast: Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Jon Voight (Jim Phelps), Emmanuelle Beart (Claire Phelps), Henry Czerny (Eugene Kittridge), Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell), Jean Reno (Franz Krieger), Vanessa Redgrave (Max), Kristin Scott Thomas (Sarah Davies), Emilio Estevez (Jack Harmon), Ingeborga Dapkunaite (Hannah Williams), Rolf Saxon (William Donloe

Rated: PG-13 (for some intense action violence)