This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
Extras:
Mission: Remarkable - 40 Years of Creating the Impossible, Mission: Explosive Exploits,
Mission: International Spy Museum, Mission: Spies Among Us, Mission: Catching the Train,
Agent Dossiers, Excellence in Filmmaking: Cruise, Two Acceptance Speeches,
Theatrical Trailers, TV Spots, Photo Gallery, M:i:III Teaser
Director:
Brian De Palma
(The Black Dahlia, Blow Out, Body Double, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Carlito's Way, Carrie, Casualties of War, Dressed To Kill, Femme Fatale, The Fury, Mission To Mars, Obsession, Raising Cain, Scarface, Snake Eyes, Toyer, The Untouchables, The Untouchables: Capone Rising, Wise Guys)
Producer:
Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner
Screenplay:
David Koepp and Robert Towne
Music:
Danny Elfman
Cast:
Ethan Hunt: Tom Cruise
Jim Phelps: Jon Voight
Claire: Emmanuelle Béart
Eugene Kittridge: Henry Czerny
Franz Krieger: Jean Reno
Luther Stickell: Ving Rhames
Sarah Davies: Kristin Scott Thomas
Frank Barnes: Dale Dye
Alexander Golitsyn: Marcel Iures
Hannah Williams: Ingeborga Dapkunaite
Train Engineer: David Schneider
Jack Harmon: Emilio Estevez
Max: ?
Mission: Impossible
is the big-screen action remake of the classic sixties
television series with a new cast, with new gadgets for the nineties, and a
new version of Lalo Schifrin's theme tune updated by U2's Adam Clayton and Larry
Mullen. The film also has an original score from Danny Elfman.
The story is quite complex for your typical Hollywood summer blockbuster, the
film easily holding its own against 1996's other offerings including
Twister, The Rock and Independence Day. While I was
impressed with The Rock, the other two films were tales of plentiful
SFX strung together with little or no plot, even if they were an equally good
workout for your sound system like this one.
The plot involves the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) on the
trail of both parts of a NOC List, a record of all the CIA's deep cover
agents working in Eastern Europe, one half of which has been stolen by Golitsyn,
a traitor within the CIA who plans to steal the second half from the Embassy
in Prague. The NOC List is split into two for security reasons: the first part
which Golitsyn already has contains the code names, but that half is useless
without the other which matches up to provide the agents' true names.
However, as double-cross follows double-cross, and the plan to apprehend
Golitsyn goes awry, members of the IMF are getting bumped off at an
alarming rate. The question is, as one of the few left alive, can Ethan get
to the truth without getting caught as he's been framed for the deaths of his
espionage team? With Tom Cruise in the lead role, is that a question that
really needs answering...
The film also contains some fantastic action set-pieces including a chase in
the Channel Tunnel between a helicopter and the train itself, as well as what
must be the most nail-biting scene in all the films made in 1996 as Tom Cruise
and his accomplices attempt to retrive the NOC List from within a unit so
secure it makes Fort Knox look like their having an open season. As they
begin the operation, Tom Cruise whispers to his men, "From now on in, I
want complete silence". When I saw that in the cinema, not a single person
made a sound, which is a rarity in the cinema these days.
For me, Tom Cruise is an actor who never fails to disappoint, and one
who has been in the A-list since the role that brought him to fame, as Maverick
in Top Gun, and who received an Oscar nomination for his latest film,
Jerry Maguire. However, the
second film
was disappointing by comparison, despite the appearance of the achingly gorgeous
Thandie Newton. More recently, the takings for the third MI film, released in
cinemas in May 2006 as this Special Edition DVD hits the shelves, have been down on the usual expectations
with suspicion that the Cruise backlash is beginning, following events like him showing off
by jumping up and down on Oprah's couch to declare his love for Katie Holmes, and then insisting
that she give birth in silence, courtesy of his completely loopy Scientology fixation.
If you're wondering what happened to the original cast of the television
series, they all declined to take part as the original plan was to feature them
only in the opening scene before killing them off, and replacing them with a
new team, and they felt they were worth more than that.
Hence, the 1990's team is led by Jon Voight as Jim Phelps, who always
has to listen to the recordings that are due to self-destruct within five
seconds. First making a name for himself in 1969's Midnight Cowboy, he
has recently come to the fore again in films such as Heat and
Anaconda.
The rest of the IMF team are rounded out by Emmanuelle Beart as Jim's
wife Claire; Kristin Scott-Thomas who appeared in the worldwide hit,
The English Patient; Ingeborge Dapkunaite who starred in 1995's
Burnt By The Sun, Oscar winner of Best Foreign Film; and Emilio
Estevez who for some reason appears in an uncredited role.
As Cruise puts the pieces of the puzzle back together he is helped out by
two top-line actors who are now making their mark in Hollywood films, Jean
Reno and Ving Rhames.
Henry Czerny is Kittridge, the man that the IMF team must answer to
and who provides the voice in the film for the "This tape will self-destruct
in five seconds"... who deserves to be in many more films than he has been
given to date. Also in the extensive cast is established actress Vanessa
Redgrave but I won't reveal the name of her character so as not to spoil
part of the plot.
The picture and sound quality of this disc are excellent, and the 2.35:1
widescreen framing is essential for De Palma's complex visuals. If you've only
seen this in a pan-and-scan version on video or cropped to 16:9 on BBC1, then
you've not seen the film properly as it does no justice to the film's tribute to
the original series with its extravagant use of tilted shots.
On the sound front, the Dolby Digital 5.1 is great, but where's the DTS soundtrack? This DVD release
was a chance to fix things like this but it's clear they've just used the same disc content which
is a shame. We even still have only a mere 13 chapters for the 105-minute running time. It's not enough, but
it's the same amount as the previously-available
PAL Laserdisc.
The DVD menu is still the same static and silent affair and the only extra on disc 1 is a
2-minute Theatrical trailer, with subtitles for the film in English (and hard of hearing),
Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. That's lazy, Paramount.
Don't be put off with the film being given a PG-certificate either. Despite
some rather un-PG-like violence, the BBFC must like Brian De Palma as they
awarded this film a PG-certificate in its uncut version, whereas the same film
is a PG-13 in the USA (the equivalent of a BBFC 12).
This particular DVD, however, is a 15-certificate, due to the content of some of the additional
material on the second disc.
Let's hope Disc 2 is where it's at, since we finally get some extras to accompany this film, given
that as you can see above we had next to nothing beforehand. All the info is detailed below:
Firstly, the supplemental material has more languages for subtitles than you can shake a stick at.
There's 22 here, including English. The inclusion of English might sound obvious but there are some
distributors who are happy to add subtitles for every language under the sun on some DVDs... apart
from English, for no apparent reason.
Mission: Remarkable - 40 Years of Creating the Impossible (11:27):
A featurette showing how we got from the original 1966 TV
series to the three films made in the past ten years (the TV series didn't even last that long).
That said, the TV series is really just a brief mention as this concentrates mostly on the movies
and contains many a soundbite from the cast and crew on each one at the time of filming.
This featurette, and all the others except where stated, is in 4:3 with letterboxed film clips.
Mission: Explosive Exploits (5:10):
Tom Cruise does his own stunts, we are told here, showing how he ran away from water in the first film
as the restaurant explodes before being suspended from the ceiling in the scene where no-one must make
a sound...
Mission: International Spy Museum (6:31):
Peter Earnest, executive director of this joint, details the gadgets that are required in espionage
shenanigans. Bugs to listen in to conversations, hole-in-the-wall cameras, radio transmitters to keep
track of people's movements - whether hidden in someone's shoes or a fake dog poo to also pick up on
chit-chat, devices to inject poison to someone, secret video cameras and disguises aplenty are
all featured here.
Mission: Spies Among Us (8:41):
A segment on how the Mission: Impossible Force (IMF) are just so damn better than the CIA and how
they should be able to exist in the real world. You also get an insight into the training required for
joining the CIA.
Mission: Catching the Train (2:40):
A brief featurette on how the exceptional train sequence was created which ran for 7:20 and consisted
of 152 separate shots.
Agent Dossiers:
No film footage here, just CVs for the characters in this movie.
Excellence in Filmmaking: Cruise (9:15):
No chat from any one person as we take a tour of film clips galore through the movies of Tom Cruise
throughout the last 20+ years, showing how he's been on top of his game the entire time. However,
the 'Also Sprach Zarathrustra' music from 2001: A Space Odyssey at the start makes it
sound like they're elevating him to godlike status.
Acceptance Speech for BAFTA/LA Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellent in Film (3:20):
This piece in anamorphic 16:9, Tom Cruise kisses corporate ass, gushing about how wonderful filmmakers
are, including Stanley Kubrick, who directed him in Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick's final film.
Acceptance Speech for MTV's Generation Award (3:42):
Katie Holmes presents Tom Cruise with the award. She's looking very smiley there, a lot moreso than
after trying to give birth while keeping schtum, as recent pictures show.
Theatrical Trailers (3:00):
A teaser and a trailer for the first film.
TV Spots (3:57):
9 brief TV trailers. Very cool to have these here.
Photo Gallery:
Some pretty pictures from the original movie to take a look at.
M:i:III Teaser (1:31):
A trailer for the new movie, which reunites Tom Cruise with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who he last
worked with in 1999's unsurpassable
Magnolia.
So, almost a full hour of footage in the above which is a good set of extras, but a lot of this stuff
should have appeared on the original DVD in the first place and the majority is the kind of thing you'll
flick through once and that's about it.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
