by Donald J. Bingle

Mission Impossible

This month’s movie is Mission Impossible. Let's start off with the most important thing first: DO NOT GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!!!!!! Visit a sick friend, balance your checkbook, rotate your tires, rotate some stranger's tires, but do not go see this movie. I will admit that my expectations were not high from the previews--the action emphasis and the casting of Tom Cruise (who is no Mr. Phelps) seemed to be contrary to the intelligence of the original series. But, even with low expectations, I was appalled at how bad the movie turned out to be. Let's start with the plot. Although described by several reviewers as too complex to be described, it was merely too bad to be believed. Any gamemaster could write a better spy plot in five minutes, even if it included East German police showing up seconds after being called.

The initial mission relates to a computer disc being stolen which, when coupled with a second computer disc, will uncover all the spies in Europe. Despite the fact that the good guys know who will attempt to filch the second disc, control the site where the disc is located, and know when the attempt on it will be made, they do not bother to replace the real disc with a counterfeit (so disaster will not befall them if they fail to catch the thief), they do not use their control of the site to protect or even mark the disc, and they do not use their technical razzle dazzle to monitor possible escape routes. When things naturally go awry, our astute spy, Tom Cruise, returns to the safehouse he knows has been compromised, and determines to infiltrate the bad guys by stealing something even more valuable from the CIA in order to offer to sell it to them. Despite his supposedly great concern for the safety of his fellow spies, he recruits a bunch of CIA rejects, compromises the integrity of Langley, and lets more secret stuff fall into the hands of the bad guys in order to try to catch them. In the course of doing this, we are led to believe that a local fire department could gain easy access to CIA HQ, that Tom Cruise is required to balance on a tether while typing in computer commands (in a scene stolen from Topkapi) when a simple telescoping pointer would have allowed him to access the computer from the safety of the air duct high above, and that helicopters can not only fly successfully in the Chunnel, but their high speed rotor blades can hit the side of the Chunnel repeatedly without breaking apart.

The poor plot and silly action stuff wouldn't have been as grating as they were if the movie also didn't go out of its way to insult the fans of the original series by turning the venerable Mr. Phelps (badly portrayed by Jon Voigt) into a traitor (word is that Gregg Morris of the original series walked out of the movie). Even if one were inclined to believe that Mr. Phelps was corruptible, it is pretty insulting to have him corrupted for money (especially the measly amounts they were referring to) in a situation which would cause the deaths of his own IMF team and the torture and death of all of the western spies in Europe. Gosh, I've probably ruined the movie for you, but in this instance, I don't care because you should never go see this movie.

Good points: a few pieces of spy business were reasonably cool--Mr. Phelps gets his self-destructing instructions on the Concorde and manages to light a cigarette and exhale just as the puff of smoke from the destructing tape wafts into the air; and the spies mark a target with ultraviolet spray via a perfume atomizer in a crowded party (but then fail to ever utilize the marker in any meaningful way). The jazzed up theme song is great, too, but even here you must beware. A full ten of the fifteen tracks on the movie soundtrack CD are not from the movie, they're not even similar to the music in the movie, or by the same artists as produced the few tracks from the movie on the CD. As far as I can tell, they are simply bad songs by people who couldn't get produced and sold without defrauding a public that had already been cheated by paying to see a bad movie.

In summary, do not see this movie. Do not buy the soundtrack.