Mission Impossible
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This article is about the theatrical film. For other meanings, see Mission: Impossible.

Mission: Impossible
1poster
The theatrical poster for film
Universe Mission: Impossibe
Directed by Brian De Palma
Produced by Tom Cruise
Written by David Koepp
Robert Towne
Steven Zaillian
Based on Mission: Impossible 
by Bruce Geller
Starring Tom Cruise
Jon Voight
Emmanuelle Béart
Henry Czerny
Jean Reno
Ving Rhames
Kristin Scott Thomas
Vanessa Redgrave
Music by Danny Elfman
Production
company
Cruise/Wagner Productions
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Country United States
Language English
Budget $80,000,000
Gross revenue $457,696,359
Preceded by Mission: Impossible (1988)
Followed by Mission: Impossible II


Good morning, Mr. Phelps. The man you're looking at is Alexander Golitsyn, an attaché at our embassy in Prague. He is also a traitor. He has stolen one half of the CIA NOC list, a record of all our deep-cover agents working in Eastern Europe. For security reasons, the NOC list is divided in two. The portion that Golitsyn already has contains code names, but this half is useless without its mate, which matches the code names with their true names. It is this half which Golitsyn plans to steal from the embassy during a reception tomorrow night. Your mission, Jim, should you choose to accept it, is to obtain photographic proof of the theft, shadow Golitsyn to his buyer, and apprehend them both. We've already dispatched a team selected from your usual group. Sarah Davies is already undercover, Jack Harmon can hack into any security system, Hannah Williams will handle surveillance, your wife Claire will cover transport, and Ethan Hunt will be your pointman as usual. He is now in Kiev and will rendezvous in Prague at a safehouse of your choosing. As always, should you or any member of your I.M. force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim

–IMF mission briefing

Mission: Impossible (also known in the Blu-ray release as M:I) is a 1996 American espionage science fiction action film directed by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Cruise. It is the first installment in the Mission: Impossible film series

In the movie, Ethan Hunt is framed for the murder of his own team after a mission goes wrong. To prove his innocence, he must break into a high-profile security building to retrieve an important file.

A sequel of the television series of the same name, the plot follows a new agent, Ethan Hunt and his mission to uncover the mole who has framed him for the murders of his entire IMF team. Work on the script had begun early with filmmaker Sydney Pollack on board, before De Palma, Steven Zaillian, David Koepp and Robert Towne were brought in. Mission: Impossible went into pre-production without a shooting script. De Palma came up with some action sequences, but Koepp and Towne was dissatisfied with the story that leads up to these events.

U2 band members Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton produced their own version of the original theme song. The song went into top ten charts around the world and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance. The film was the third highest grossing of the year and received positive reviews from film critics. The film marked the beginning of a film series, with sequels Mission: Impossible II, Mission: Impossible III, Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, Fallout, Dead Reckoning Part One and Dead Reckoning Part Two released in 2000, 2006, 2011, 2015, 2018, 2023 and 2024.

Plot[]

Ethan Hunt is an agent working for the Impossible Mission Force. He, Jim Phelps, Claire Phelps, Hannah Williams, Sarah Davies and Jack Harmon are tasked with getting the NOC list from a party in the Czech Republic. However, the mission goes wrong and everyone except Hunt is killed.

Eugene Kittridge, who reveals that he is in Prague, meets with Hunt in a bar and suspects he is a mole that caused the deaths of his team. Hunt blows up the bar's fish tank and escapes back to the IMF safe house. As he investigates, he realizes that there is a person called Job and the NOC list was supposed to be delivered to this person. Claire shows up, and the two begin to continue investigating.

Using a Dunhill Drop Hunt meets with Max and tells her the job is compromised. The next day, Hunt meets Luther Stickell, whose only request is to keep the equipment when they're done, and Franz Krieger, a skilled knives man. They infiltrate the Langley Headquarters of the CIA to get the real NOC list. The NOC list is with William Donloe, a CIA agent. After a tense sequence in which Hunt gets the NOC list without touching the floor, Krieger drops a knife onto the table.

Heading back to base, Hunt figures out that Krieger was part of the sabotage plot, since the knife that was found on the body of Davies was similar to the one Krieger dropped in Langley. Hunt bluffs Krieger, gets the real NOC list, and arranges for Job to meet him on a TGV train the next day. Hunt tells Kittridge the plan, then finds Jim. Hunt also tells Jim.

On the TGV train, Jim is revealed to be the bad guy, with Claire as his assistant. Hunt confronts Jim, and Jim attempts to escape, shooting his own wife. On the roof of the train, Hunt battles Jim as they head into a tunnel. Hunt kills both Jim and Krieger with a bubblegum bomb, and Max is presumed arrested.

Cast[]

Reception[]

Box Office[]

Mission: Impossible opened on May 22, 1996, in a then-record 3,012 theaters, becoming the first film to be released to over 3,000 theaters in the United States, and broke the record for a film opening on Wednesday with US$11.8 million, beating the $11.7 million set by Terminator 2: Judgment Day made in 1991. The film also set house records in several theaters around the United States. Earning $45.4 million, Mission: Impossible smashed the short-lived record held by Twister for having the biggest May opening weekend. It grossed $75 million in its first six days, surpassing Jurassic Park, and took in more than $56 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend, beating out The Flintstones. The next year, The Lost World: Jurassic Park would take the records for having the largest May opening weekend, the biggest number of screenings and the highest Memorial Day gross. The film topped the box office for two weeks until it was displaced by The Rock. Cruise deferred his usual $20 million fee for a significant percentage of the box office. The film went on to make $180.9 million in North America and $276.7 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $457.6 million.

Critics[]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 66%, based on 65 reviews, with an average rating of 6.1/10. The Audience Score is sitting at 71% with over 250,000 verified ratings. The website's critics' consensus reads: "Full of special effects, Brian De Palma's update of Mission: Impossible has a lot of sweeping spectacle, but the plot is sometimes convoluted." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 59 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "This is a movie that exists in the instant, and we must exist in the instant to enjoy it." In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden addressed the film's convoluted plot: "If that story doesn't make a shred of sense on any number of levels, so what? Neither did the television series, in which basic credibility didn't matter so long as its sci-fi popular mechanics kept up the suspense." Mike Clark of USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and said that it was "stylish, brisk but lacking in human dimension despite an attractive cast, the glass is either half-empty or half-full here, though the concoction goes down with ease."

However, Hal Hinson, in his review for The Washington Post, wrote, "There are empty thrills, and some suspense. But throughout the film, we keep waiting for some trace of personality, some color in the dialogue, some hipness in the staging or in the characters' attitudes. And it's not there." Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "What is not present in Mission: Impossible (which, aside from the title, sound-track quotations from the theme song and self-destructing assignment tapes, has little to do with the old TV show) is a plot that logically links all these events or characters with any discernible motives beyond surviving the crisis of the moment." Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman gave the film a "B" rating and said, "The problem isn't that the plot is too complicated; it's that each detail is given the exact same nagging emphasis. Intriguing yet mechanistic, jammed with action yet as talky and dense as a physics seminar, the studiously labyrinthine Mission: Impossible grabs your attention without quite tickling your imagination."

Numerous reviewers have praised the CIA break-in and the last climactic pursuit scene, despite their mixed feelings about the rest of the film. Both scenes have frequently featured highly on fans and critics' lists of best action scenes from this series and have been referenced many times in other subsequent works.

Response from the original cast[]

Several cast members of the original television series that ran from 1966 to 1973 reacted negatively to the film. Actor Greg Morris, who portrayed Barney Collier in the original television series, was reportedly disgusted with the film's treatment of the Phelps character, and he walked out of the theater before the film ended. Peter Graves, who played Jim Phelps in the original series as well as in the late-1980s revival, also disliked how Phelps turned out in the film. Graves had been offered the chance to reprise his role from the TV series but turned it down upon learning his character would be revealed as a traitor.

Martin Landau, who portrayed Rollin Hand in the original series, expressed his own disapproval concerning the film. In an MTV interview in October 2009, Landau stated, "When they were working on an early incarnation of the first one—not the script they ultimately did—they wanted the entire team to be destroyed, done away with one at a time, and I was against that. It was basically an action-adventure movie and not Mission. Mission was a mind game. The ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there. So the whole texture changed. Why volunteer to essentially have our characters commit suicide? I passed on it ... The script wasn't that good either!"

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