Tom Cruise in ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’.
Tom Cruise is a bonafide movie star, probably the last of a dying breed. Whether he is gifting the famous white chocolate coconut Bundt cake in the holiday season to his loved ones, or standing on top of London’s BFI IMAX Cinema, or doing a charming Namaste, he grabs eyeballs and mind space. He works hard to keep the magic alive, doing his hair-raising stunts, producing, and otherwise being completely involved in his movies.
While Cruise has been part of innumerable blockbusters, and a few franchises, it is theMission: Impossible movies that have cemented his place in Hollywood heaven. Mission: Impossible, released almost 30 years ago on May 22, 1996, was directed by the sultan of style, Brian De Palma. A reboot of the eponymous 1966 television series, Mission: Impossible was Cruise/Wagner Productions’ first project.
Beginning of the saga
The film was enormous fun, blindingly successful, and laid the template for the movies that followed, from the music and mission briefs to the masks and Macguffins. Lalo Schifrin’s M:I theme, probably using Morse code as the starting point (the code for M.I. is two dashes followed by two dots, which could translate to the five-beat rhythm Schifrin used), provided the adrenalin rush.
As technology evolved, so did the way the mission briefs were delivered to Ethan Hunt — from video cassettes to sunglasses and then going retro in an old fashioned phone box. Whatever the means of delivery, the message would “self destruct in five seconds”, calling for solid speed reading and comprehension skills.
And then there were the stunts. In the first film as Cruise’s Hunt hung suspended inside the secure CIA building, we held our collective breath, dreading the bead of sweat will drop, which would set off all kinds of alarms. There was the rodent in the shaft and Hunt saying “toast” to add the right timbre to the tension. And how about the meeting with the smiling arms dealer, Max (Vanessa Redgrave), on the TGV to exchange the ‘NOC’ list, which ends with a helicopter crashing in a tunnel with its propeller blade mere inches from Hunt’s throat?
Better and better
John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2 in 2000 came with the director’s trademark slo-mo, pigeons and flying coats and had a suitably ludicrous plot involving killer viruses and their antidotes, their names taken from Greek myth — Chimera and Bellerophon. J. J. Abrams made his directorial debut with Mission: Impossible III in 2006. The film was darker and grittier thanks to a brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman as yet another arms dealer, Owen Davian.
Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol came out in 2011 and will be mainly remembered for Anil Kapoor’s weird maharaja turn, sets in Vancouver dressed to look like Bengaluru and of course, Cruise’s antics on the Burj Khalifa, where “blue is glue and red is dead,” in the immortal words of Christopher McQuarrie, who has directed all the M:I films since.
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation in 2015 saw the introduction of Rebecca Ferguson’s disavowed MI6 agent, Ilsa Faust. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) revealed a duplicitous CIA agent in Henry Cavill’s August Walker.
Hunt shares a moment with ex-wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan), while Max’s daughter, Alanna (Vanessa Kirby), continues the family business as the White Widow.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (that is a mouthful) in 2023 was meant to be the first of a two-part conclusion to the adventures of Ethan Hunt and the IMF, but Cruise has said if Harrison Ford can play Indiana Jones in his 80s, there is no need to slow down Ethan Hunt on the basis of his age.
A series that stands out
Recent spy thrillers on streamers, including The Agency and The Day of the Jackal, or movies such as Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag, walk a shadowy path of false identities and lies. The M:I brand of espionage thriller, on the other hand, has a lightness of touch, the masks notwithstanding. Hunt is working tirelessly to keep the world safe unlike Michael Fassbender’s Martian in The Agency, who has doubts of whether he wishes to save the country or the woman he loves.
The Daniel Craig James Bond movies started off as a grittier take on Ian Fleming’s superspy but by the fifth film, No Time To Die (2021), had become rather self indulgent and dour.
Cruise on the other hand has not lost sight of his one and only mission, which is to keep us entertained, and no mountain or airplane is too high for him to jump off from to achieve that.
Published – May 16, 2025 01:15 pm IST