Mission: Impossible turns 25 — How Brian De Palma's spy thriller helped morph Tom Cruise into Hollywood's definitive action star

Brian De Palma didn’t imagine Mission: Impossible would kick off a whole franchise. He made a film the old-fashioned way: a holistic story which stands alone with no obligations to a larger mythology. Satisfied audiences warmed to the idea of more of it — and thus a franchise was born. Paradoxically, the 1996 film itself was a reboot of a classic TV series, before it birthed its own set of sequels and an action star with a death wish. Today, Mission: Impossible  is synonymous with Tom Cruise dangling off of things: cliffs, planes, ropes, buildings, etc.

He is his own franchise, a manifestation of a brand that smiles death in the face stunt after stunt, film after film. But the Mission: Impossible films are more than just a Tom Cruise vehicle.

He may be the one piloting helicopters and riding bikes through oncoming traffic, but each entry is steered by a clear directorial vision. Nowhere is this clearer than in the first, which set the template for everything that came after. Mission: Impossible bears all of De Palma’s trademarks. The plot is Hitchcockian: a falsely accused man’s quest to clear his name. In a film full of masks and deceptions, the subjective camera plays into his idea of cinema as “lies 24 times a second,” the antithesis of Jean-Luc Godard’s famous quote. He brings out all his toys: Steadicam, Dutch angles and split diopter shots. The narrative skeleton is similar to the original TV series. The Impossible Mission Force (IMF) team, a covert CIA offshoot, must plan and execute espionage operations against practically unachievable odds. There’s usually a heist, the elaborate planning of it, and the suspenseful enactment of it. Technology is an obstacle and a weapon. The opening scene delivers self-destructing instructions (“Your mission, should you choose to accept it…”). Danny Elfman also retained Lalo Schifrin’s theme, the now iconic burning fuse and “dun dun dada dun dun dada…" [caption id=“attachment_9638041” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Still from Mission: Impossible[/caption] That’s about where the similarities end. To divorce the movie from the original TV series and start with a clean slate, Mission: Impossible turned Jim Phelps, the man who was the leader of the IMF in the preceding series, into the villain of the new saga. This allowed Cruise’s Ethan Hunt to take centre stage. Hunt, who’s been framed for the murder of his IMF team, is forced to go rogue to expose Jon Voight’s Phelps. As Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang once pointed out, “Its story — of a man betrayed by the shadowy system he works for, then forced to go rogue — becomes a blink-and-you-miss-it metaphor for (De Palma’s own) Hollywood career." Having chosen to accept the mission, Hunt and his IMF team are sent to a diplomatic reception in the Prague Embassy to intercept a rogue agent from stealing a list (a MacGuffin really) containing the names of undercover agents. De Palma stages the scene with a Steadicam POV shot, pointing out every IMF field agent at the reception. Things appear to be going smoothly before they go pear- shaped. The list is stolen. The IMF agents get picked off, one by one, by unknown killers who leave Hunt to take the fall. During the post-op debrief, IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), who now believes Hunt to be the rogue agent, has a team prepared to take him down. It’s a tense face-to-face made tenser by De Palma’s split-diopter shots. An explosive chewing gum comes in handy in Hunt’s escape. But the enduring pleasures of Mission: Impossible can be boiled down to two set pieces, and how De Palma directs them. First is the CIA vault heist. Helping Hunt on his mission to clear his name are ex-IMF agents: hacker Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames who became a franchise regular), pilot Franz Krieger (Jean Reno), and Claire Phelps (Emmanuelle Béart), who believes her husband Jim is also dead. To prove he isn’t the mole, Ethan must retrieve the real list (the other one turned out to be fake) from a computer located in a highly secure vault inside CIA’s headquarters at Langley. If anyone or anything touches the floor of the vault, the alarm goes off. If the room temperature increases by a degree, the alarm goes off. If there’s a single sound above a certain decibel level…you get the point. De Palma’s mastery lies in evoking non-visual sensations through visuals. A heist becomes sensory poetry. [caption id=“attachment_9638011” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible[/caption] Watching Cruise descend from a cable with the conniving Krieger the only thing keeping him from slipping and setting off the alarm, the viewer holds his breath too so as to not make any noise. The tension rises with each new detail De Palma introduces: a rat closing in on Krieger, and a single drop of sweat rolling down Hunt’s forehead. He just about stops it from hitting the floor, but can’t do likewise with Krieger’s knife. Tension being cut with a knife takes on a whole new meaning. De Palma thrives in this silence and minimalism. He also keeps the viewer in the blind by not walking us through a play-by-play beforehand, like some of the future instalments do. We discover the plan as it materialises. The sequence pretty much sets the benchmark for every Mission: Impossible  and heist movie to follow. The quiet elegance to the CIA vault heist stands in stark contrast to the loud frenzy of the climactic train sequence. If the former only employed practical effects, the latter benefited from some CGI. Hunt confronts Phelps atop a TGV moving at breakneck speed, and De Palma mines some expertly calibrated thrills with the wind velocity and the low clearance obstacles in the tunnel. The camera runs parallel to the train for the most part, simulating the feeling you’re right next to the action. When Phelps tries to escape via Krieger’s helicopter, Hunt tethers the train to it. He then leaps on to the helicopter, and plants another one of those exploding chewing gums. The explosion hurls him back onto the train, where the blade of the helicopter stops just short of slashing his throat. It really foresees Cruise’s fondness for acrobatics on other modes of transportation in subsequent films. It’s the kind of stunt sequence which has really come to define the franchise. Most importantly, in killing the once-head of the IMF, Cruise completes the franchise takeover. [caption id=“attachment_9638081” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Tom Cruise and Emmanuelle Beart in Mission: Impossible[/caption] Over the next five films, Cruise hired directors who could each bring their own style and vision. John Woo brought in doves and close-combat action. JJ Abrams gave Hunt personal stakes. Brad Bird sent him across the globe, and also turned Anil Kapoor into an obnoxious playboy. Then, Christopher McQuarrie came and truly made the franchise a stunt-filled orgy worthy of Cruise’s name. It’s a rare franchise with no real unwatchable entry. The film which started it all stands apart from the rest solely because there is a sophistication in its simplicity. Mission: Impossible won’t be remembered as the definitive film of Brian De Palma’s directorial resume of course. But It will be remembered as the film which helped morph Tom Cruise into Hollywood’s definitive action star.