Mission Impossible - Special Collectors Edition - DVD Review

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Review

Movie
You could be forgiven for thinking that Mission Impossible is going to be your regular action movie with tons of explosions and fights, with the hero, in this case Tom Cruise, coming up against 6 or 7 burly henchmen and creaming them. Well I am happy to say that you could not be further from the truth. Sure there is action aplenty but rather than trying to wow the audience with pyrotechnics there are twists and turns and a general Brian DePalma feel to the whole picture, that initially leaves you wondering who the bad guy is?

The overall story is essentially this. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is part of a small IMF (Impossible Mission Force) team; the other team members are Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), who is the overall leader of the group, Claire Phelps, his wife (Emmanuelle Beart), Sarah Davies (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Jack Harmen (Emilio Estevez) and their mission (that they’ve chosen to accept) is to recover a NOC (Non Official Cover) list that has been stolen. However the mission is in fact a ruse by the CIA to hunt out a mole in the team, most of the team are killed off quickly leaving only (initially) Ethan Hunt as the remaining agent alive, therefore the CIA believe Hunt to be the Mole. Hunt of course knowing that he is not the bad guy in all this escapes the clutches of the CIA and goes on the hunt for the real traitor which includes breaking into CIA headquarters at Langley in the now famous sealed vault scene.

When I watch a spy film the very nature of the material means that I should expect the story to be relatively hard to follow, I expect twists and turns in order to throw me off the scent of how the film is going to pan out, almost as if I am pulled into the whole experience as a spy trying to unravel the truth. But then it all needs to flow together at the end, tying up all the loose ends and sub plots that have come before it, and it is this that DePalma does so well. In fact to go back to the beginning of the paragraph the film doesn’t wait until the end before it starts to unravel its supposedly confusing points, which is nice as you are not left scratching your head right up until the last minute, and at 110 minutes it all feels just right and well put together that you wondered where the time went.

You will often read that DePalma is compared to Hitchcock who is the accepted master of suspense and you can see how he gets that reputation with the unusual camera angles, and split screens as well as a Janet Leigh type character but on a more personal level we get the relatively over the top end train/helicopter sequence that actually has some comedic value to it, on top of this he seem to have given some of the scenes a definite 70’s feel. For Example the Hotel Room in Prague and another Hotel room based in Liverpool Street in London, to me they had a definite 70s feel about them.

The acting is very good in this first film, I think mainly because as well as the lesser known actors there are the big hitters in Tom Cruise, Job Voight, Vanessa Redgrave and Jean Reno. I have read elsewhere that Tom Cruise likes to take over and dominate every scene in a film, basically crowding out any other actors. I find that a bit of an unfair comment. After all most films centre around one character and the fact remains that they, the main actor’s, are generally the main pulling power of a movie and need to dominate scenes they are in to a certain degree. I think Tom Cruise is a good actor, his extensive list of movies as well as a bank account that I personally would like to spend 20 minutes with bear’s testament to that theory. In fact I cannot fault any of the actors in this movie, all were believable and all played there parts very well no matter how much screen time they had.

The main comparison for Ethan Hunt of course is James Bond, and whilst Daniel Craig is an unknown entity to me as Bond it would say that although Pierce Brosnan comes across as more suave in the Bond movies with “stiff upper lip” humour I believe that the Mission Impossible franchise could have (had it stuck to the same look and feel as MI-1) given Bond a run for his money. It’s a real pity that the Mission Impossible franchise didn’t continue like this, instead opting for a John Woo action film for the second instalment and an as yet to be determined offering from J.J Adams they had a real opportunity to make a movie with a wonderful slant and they missed it.

Picture
I couldn’t find fault with the picture quality in the movie, from the dark streets of Prague to the cold bright clinical lights of the vault I found it flawless. As mentioned in the review the colour palette of some scenes reminded me of a direct take with the TV program, no signs of dirt or grain, no blooming on the whites and the black were dark without losing clarity. Overall very pleasing on the eye.

Sound
Good use of the surrounds from both the dialogue and score makes this a pleasing if non intrusive soundtrack. Everything was crisp and clear with good sound separation and levels were just right so that I wasn’t reaching for the remote control to turn it down at the loud bits.

Extras
A Plethora of bonus features on this SE disk, all times are approximate. I think there are some major missed opportunities on the extras, little can be seen of DePalma and the bonus features become the we love Tom Cruise brigade, I must say I thought his Bafta speech was good but do we really need to see two Tom Cruise Speeches and a Montage of his films. I would rather have had a DePalma commentary.

All extras are on the second disc, disc one is solely used for the film.

• Mission Remarkable – 40 years of creating the impossible – 11 mins
A look into the entire MI franchise including snippets from the original series upon which it is based.

• Mission – Explosive Exploits – 5 Mins
A view into Tom Cruise performing his own stunts.

• Mission – International Spy Museum – 6 mins
Give us a little tour of the Spy Museum in Washington where we see some of the tools and tradecraft used by real spy’s and agents.

• Mission – Spy’s among us – 8.5 mins
a brief look into what the real CIA get up to, at least what we are allowed to know.

• Mission – Catching the train – 2 mins
a look into how the train/helicopter scene was created.

• Agent Dossiers
– examine the dossiers of the IMF agents.

• Excellence in film-making - Cruise – 8.5 mins
a montage of Tom Cruise films, pretty impressive really.

• Acceptance speech for BAFTA/LA;s Stanley Kubricks Britannia Award for excellence in film
Damn good speech

• Speech for MTVs generation award
another speech although nowhere near as good as the first.

• Trailers


• TV Spots


• Photo Stills


• MI-3 Trailer

Overall
Totally recommended. I have not owned any previous releases of Mission Impossible so am unsure if this is a massive improvement over other discs, but if you have not owned Mission Impossible before and you want a clever, polished action/thriller/spy movie then this certainly should sit near, if not at the top of your list.

Review Equipment
Harman Kardon AVR7300 Amplifier
Harman Kardon DVD 22 Multi Region DVD Player
KEF PSW2500 Sub-woofer (maple)
KEF Q4 front and surround speakers (maple)
KEF Q6 centre speaker (maple)
Phillips 30" 30PF9975 LCD TV

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About Steve Peto

I think it was around 1979 when I tried to sneak into the local Odeon cinema to see Ridley Scott’s Alien that I started to become more aware of movies and finding out what I liked in terms of genre. But somewhat surprisingly even at that young age I was enjoying some of the older films such as Forbidden Planet.

It was not until I was given my first DVD that the bug hit me. And it was all down to a mate giving me a Region 1 version of “The Matrix” as his player was only a region 2. From there it has been a mainly constant purchasing process to increase my collection which currently sits at 1000+ individual movies and television episodes; although invelos which only counts per barcode shows it as 485.

I have been on the Digital Lard site since its earlier incantation DVD Lard, and after a period of time took the plunge into doing reviews and this is what I currently do.

My favourite genres are mainly Action/Adventure, Horror, Sci-Fi and Mystery although I do like films from other genres too.

Ten of my favourites film are (in no particular order) Alien, Aliens, 12 Angry Men (1957), Forbidden Planet, The Thing, Jaws, Blade Runner, 300, Full Metal Jacket, Forrest Gump, Although there are plenty more movies that I could list here.

Favourite actors at the moment would be Christian Bale, Christopher Walken, Johnny Depp, Basil Rathbone, Samuel L Jackson, Favourite directors are David Fincher and Ridley Scott.