Mission: Impossible (1996)

Score: A- (9/10)

With awe-inspiringly outlandish stunts and a relatively gripping narrative, it’s easy to see why Mission: Impossible stands as a thrilling action classic deserving of Tom Cruise’s stuntman acrobatics and as one of today’s biggest movie franchises.

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Tom Cruise is arguably at his peak when he’s allowed to go all out on stunts. Whether in the sky or on the ground, he leaves jaws dropped at every chance he gets in his movies. However, some might ask where his stunt devil career started. Many would argue it's because of his role as Maverick in 1986’s Top Gun after a tenure of playing characters relying more on playfulness than anything else. However, that spark possibly led him to a famous role in 1992's A Few Good Men. However, those films only scratch the surface of Cruise’s talent pool. However, I argue his stunt career truly began with his role as Ethan Hunt in 1996’s Mission: Impossible.

One element of Mission: Impossible the franchise continues to heighten with each proceeding sequel is its intense and death-defying stunts. It’s easy to see why upon first viewing, as Tom Cruise rises to the occasion and performs sequences frequently mentioned and shown online. The original film is no exception to the idea. It contains three stunt sequences, each tightly fitting into each of the movie’s acts. However, the most notable is one where Ethan Hunt attempts to steal NOC files from the Pentagon via an overhead air conditioner. He’s lowered into a well-enclosed but sound-sensitive room, which is only accessible to approved personnel, with a heat sensor and a weight-sensitive floor. The deafening silence causes the scene to elevate its tension, only heightening once Hunt’s accomplices make near-critical errors.

Speaking of Hunt’s accomplices, the film offers a gritty look at a supposed enemy of the United States from the film’s opening minutes to the end credits, arguably allowing for some of the best sequences in the movie’s runtime. Hunt loses his team to an ambush before promptly fleeing the scene after being accused of being the mole the U.S. government is looking for. The rest of the movie follows Hunt’s quest to find and bust who killed his team and framed him for their work. It allows the film to showcase Hunt’s and other agents of the United States' skills as field agents. The Mission Force is well aware of how bad it would be if one of their agents switched sides, clarified by their concern over the mole hidden in their ranks. Each detail fed to the audience adds flavor and intensity to the already entertaining story. Each element also makes each plot twist and reveal all the more satisfying, especially once Hunt figures out who the mole is and who’s helped them get what they desire. It highlights the “distrust” mentality in many spy thrillers (a genre I absolutely love), which is what works so well when balanced with character and narrative tension.

When it comes to spy thrillers, many love the tense atmospheres of any situation the main characters find themselves. Mission: Impossible is no stranger to this feeling due to its frequent dosage of action-filled stunts. The story also provides a space for those stunts to have depth and meaning, allowing for further use of tension and spy-centric sequences between characters. Ethan Hunt was undoubtedly one of the coolest-built characters to come out of the film industry back in the 1990s, and Tom Cruise shows no signs of slowing the idea down nowadays. While the film has moments very much aged by time and storytelling’s evolution and refinement, the flashy and jaw-dropping achievement is what people look for in the Mission: Impossible franchise, with the franchise’s first theatrical outing being no stranger to the notion.