Mission: Impossible (1996)

Director: Brian de Palma

Cast: Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Béart

Have I Seen it Before: The time is May, 1996. Having just escaped the gulag of the 5th grade, I am now facing the indignity of watching the movie from the backseat of my mom’s Volvo, my head contorted to try to piece together what was happening, and only intermittently succeeding. My neck hurts just thinking about the first time I saw the movie. Whatever anyone says, kids, drive-ins are meant to be enjoyed from the front seat.

Did I Like It: I think most of America didn’t need my mother’s sensible station wagon to be left somewhat befuddled by the plot. Modern audience, too, might be lost in the peak-90s tech that moves the plot along. It is truly amazing that a film exists where equal wait and suspense is given to an exploding helicopter as it is to a deep dive into usenet groups.

But for my money, while the series found an interesting groove thanks to later entries (the less said about the flimsy and tonally strange M:I-2 (2000), the better), this first film ages the best. It just needs a few viewings to keep straight the various chess moves that force the aforementioned helicopter into a TGV tunnel.

The original TV show—before Mission: Impossible became synonymous with Tom Cruise improbably hanging from things—was always a cat and mouse game. The show wasn’t always great, as is evidenced by the few times I’ve attempted to binge-watch episodes of the 1966-1973 series—but the true genius behind the film is where the audience is part of the cat and mouse game. Indeed, de Palma may have been the only director who could have pulled off this quality. We’re not sure—aside from Cruise—who we can trust. More often than not, our assumptions are not rewarded. Emilio Estevez is in the picture! He’s a movie star, maybe not on the caliber of Cruise, but he’s a delight in those hockey movies with the ducks in them, surely, he’s going to stick around. Nope. He doesn’t even get the Goose treatment of dying as the set-up to the third act. 

The team is on a mission that goes disastrously in that first reel, but ah ha! The film’s first surprise? The heroes of the piece are the target of an entirely different IMF team. This back and forth goes pretty much up until the last act, when just as it feels as if the bad guys are getting away with the whole thing, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) pulls off one more mask and the plot, mostly comes together. For the most part, is a remarkably thoughtful deconstruction of the source material, especially for a movie that based on a TV show that was content to repeat plots whole-cloth and hope no one would notice.

But that does lead to one interesting question: why does the film work better on repeat viewings? I think the answer may lie in a false attempt at suspense in the the third act. After Hunt and Phelps (Voight) are reunited, it’s absolutely clear that Phelps has been the traitor all along. De Palma takes us through Hunt’s piecing together what happened. And yet, the final scenes on the train try their damndest to obscure the identity of Job. Given that Hunt’s one strategic flaw is not wanting to believe until the last moment that Claire (Béart) has also been playing both sides, had that sequence leaned more into that question, or if the mystery of Job’s identity had been kept obscured until the last possible moment, maybe people wouldn’t have felt so discombobulated by the film on first blush.

Or maybe I just have some issues with my Mom’s late, sainted Volvo that I’m still working through…

Carrie (1976)

Director: Brian De Palma

Cast: Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, Pig’s Blood Travolta*

Have I Seen it Before: I’m almost sure that I have, but I can’t point to when I might have done so. I definitely remember reading the book, if that helps.

Did I Like It: Well, clearly the memorability of the book over the movie should tell us something.

I like Brian De Palma. I really do. I think The Untouchables (1987) is about as great a movie as is ever to exist. Once one has worked out just what the hell is happening in Mission: Impossible (1996), it’s a pretty enjoyable spy thriller. 

And I want to like Carrie. I really do. I get the feeling I wanted to like Carrie just as much as De Palma himself wanted to like the film. Unfortunately, he only seems to be interested in certain parts of the film. 

The climax is the kind of confluence of conflicting POVs that have become De Palma’s bread and butter. While through cultural osmosis, we’ve all seen the moment when Carrie (Spacek) is brought to her semi-final humiliation, but it’s the Rube Goldberg machinations that lead up to that moment and eventually tear everything apart that makes the sequence worth remembering.

Everything else tends to play out with the subtlety and wit of an after-school special. The score—by Pino Donaggio—is all over the place, when it isn’t shamelessly and artlessly aping Bernard Hermann’s score for Psycho (1960). 

And of course, De Palma does seem to be awfully interested in footage of naked women, and there is plenty of it. I’m not a prude, but the tableaus De Palma puts together makes me think that he may not have been the one to properly understand and tell this story. To be fair, King may not have been either, but I digress. I have not seen the 2013 remake, the fact that a woman directed the film does tend to recommend it on at least one level.

*Little known fact, the blood dumped on Carrie during the film’s infamous climax was played by John Travolta’s cousin.