Mission: Impossible

The most contentious choice in Brian De Palma’s film is in the script: Jim Phelps, leader of the television team, turns out to be the traitor. Peter Graves, who carried that role for years, refused the offer to return once he learned what Phelps would become, later saying he regretted the name being used. Martin Landau argued the series had been a mind game while the film became action adventure. Newcomers read the reversal as a twist; anyone raised on the show as an insult. Across one hundred and eleven minutes tension is built from quiet. The central theft runs for minutes with almost no dialogue, the jeopardy coming from a bead of sweat and a rat, not gunfire. Tom Cruise weighted his shoes with British coins to stay level on the wire. Because loyalties stay unresolved, the plot collapses under divided attention and repays a second viewing more than a first. Cruise produced here for the first time, deferring his usual twenty million dollar fee for a share of gross. Prague was among the first modern cities Hollywood both set and shot in. Who it’s for: anyone who accepts minutes of wordless vault work and accepts Phelps as the traitor. Who it’s not for: viewers expecting the stunt scale of the later instalments.