Mission Impossible

Thriller, Action

Tom Cruise	Ethan Hunt
Jon Voight	Jim Phelps
Emmanuelle Béart	Claire
Henry Czerny	Kittridge
Vanessa Redgrave	Max
Ving Rhames	Luther
Jean Reno	Krieger
Kristin Scott Thomas	Sarah Davies
Dale Dye	Frank Barnes
Marcel Iures	Golitsyn
Kristin Scott-Thomas	Sarah Davies
Rolf Saxon	William Donloe
Rudolf Pechan	Mayor Brandl
Karel Dobry	Matthias
Ion Caramitru	Zozimov

Director	Brian De Palma
Producer	Tom Cruise; Paula Wagner
Writer	Steven Zaillian; David Koepp
Cinematography	Stephen H. Burum
Musician	Danny Elfman

A flashy, splashy summer-movie blockbuster that's fun and exciting without being mindless? That's the impossible mission accomplished by director Brian De Palma, star-coproducer Tom Cruise, and the crack team of Mission: Impossible. Based on the '60s TV show and an almost impenetrably complex (but nonetheless thrilling) original story by David Koepp (Jurassic Park) and Steven Zaillian (Schindler's List), with a screenplay by Koepp and Robert Towne (Chinatown, Shampoo), Mission: Impossible begins with veteran agent Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) and his expert crew embarking on a mission that goes horribly, horribly wrong. But nothing is what it seems. The nail-biting set piece--always a signature of director De Palma (Carrie, The Untouchables)--in which Cruise is lowered from the ceiling to retrieve information from a computer in a high-security vault--is an instant classic. But perhaps even more impressive, at least in retrospect, is a flashback sequence in which two characters attempt to reconstruct a series of events from multiple points of view. It's pretty daring and sophisticated stuff for a big-budget spy movie, but brains were always what put the Mission: Impossible team ahead of the competition, anyway, no? --Jim Emerson