Mission: Impossible

Join me as I explore the first of Tom Cruise's action movie tours de force, adapted from the nearly actionless TV series of the same name. Impossible, you say? Oh quite possible indeed if you throw out everything the TV show did. I examine the differences between the movie's treatment of IFM and the 1960s TV show. I consider Tom Cruise as a thinking-man's action movie star, Brian De Palma as a director, Jon Voight as an IMF lead, and the locations as locations. I compare it to Rafifi, Topkapi, Die Hard and Knight and Day. I consider the idea of taking the TV show's premise and complicating it until it becomes ridiculous. I pull apart story elements like the insider-gone-bad and the nonsensical parts of the plot like the use of bible verses.