Mission: Implausible -- A luxury Cruise vessel

By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan

JAKARTA (JP): From the moment movie-goers caught wind of this big-screen adaption of the popular '60s television series Mission: Impossible, the PR was already set. Superficially, at least, the promise of this movie was too good to be true. It had all the makings of the summer blockbuster it is intended to be.

Consider this for the PR boys and girls: Director - Brian de Palma, a master of genre thrillers and clever Hitchcockian wit. Lead actor and first time producer - smiling, cocky Tom Cruise, the perennial wise guy. Supporting actors - Jon Voight, who used to drain our tears in the 80's through his daddy portrayal in The Champ. Emilio Estevez, original member of the Bratpack who used to set 80's teenager tongues wagging and one-time fiancee of Miss Moore. Jean Reno, the eternally disheveled and likable hero of The Professional. Ving Rhames, of Pulp Fiction fame. Kristin Scott-Thomas, most remember for her superb supporting roles in two of Hugh Grant's best pictures to date, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Roman Polanski's wonderfully perverse psychological thriller Bitter Moon. Emmanuelle Beart, the darling goddess of French melodrama. Vanessa Redgrave, who usually does what actors should do -- act.

And of course, that theme music.

It is clear from the minute the towering opening titles spring up to the Dolby-digitalized, heavy orchestration of Lalo Schrifin's immensely popular theme that we may not even need to see the titles. Maybe the music alone is worth all this wait.

For the most part, the movie holds up, quite surprisingly. It has most of the ingredients that audience look for in a thriller spectacular pyrotechnics, stunning special effects, vertiginous camera shots.

But there is a slight problem. The plot is so well-nigh impossible to follow that perhaps it is not meant to be followed. The whole thing is conceived only as a vehicle for sensational action sequences, slick surface and technical skill. Unlike the original series - which was based on Cold War moral certainties and thus had clear-cut notions of good and bad - this modern-day rendition, thirty years down the track, is a muddled and convoluted attempt at re-vitalizing a dying thriller, leaving us with little idea who the enemy is and what is at stake.

The characters are grossly underdeveloped, with the exception of Vanessa Redgrave as the mysterious arms-and-information broker, and Ving Rhames as a disavowed agent with a jaunty attitude. Considering the talents involved, the others are not even remotely interesting. By the end of the film you really don't know any of them much better, let alone care about their fate.

The whole thing opens with scenes showing a solid team gelled together by mutual respect and affection. Cocky agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise), with his spiky close-cropped hair, makes fun of pouty agent Claire Phelps (Beart) over a cup of coffee. Traditionally, this means that the movie's headed towards major disaster. Coffee banter is the first sanctuary of the uninspired. It brings back memories of the coffee "argument" many years ago between cable-TV queen Jaclyn Smith and her male counterpart, Robert Wagner, in a made-for-cable adaption of Sidney Sheldon's Rage of Angels. Or NBC's Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric, who can run an entire half- hour of their show purely on the subject of their morning coffee.

But the movie rolls on to a stricter adherence to the original formula: Jim Phelps (Voight), head of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) receives instruction via the famous self-destructive tape regarding the team's latest assignment. The action thus begins in an American embassy gala reception in Prague (again, curiously Sidney Sheldon-esque), where his team is to document, in photographs, the theft by an enemy agent of a computer disk containing the CIA master list of top undercover agents, and to follow him until he delivers it into the hands of the master enemy. The process, which is supposedly taking place in the post- Cold War era, is choc-a-bloc with Cold War spy cliches: built-in TV cameras, concealed microphones, car explosions, stabbings, shootings, and disguised agents of all manners and stripes.

As expected, disaster strikes. The disk - the cause of all the commotion - does a convenient disappearing act. Suspicion falls miraculously thrown on Hunt, who is forced to go underground to find the real culprit. As the original IMF team is wiped out during the process - save for Hunt and Claire - Hunt assembles a new team, which is where Reno and Rhames come into the picture. At this point, it is pretty much The Firm re-visited, albeit on a grander scale, getting Mr. Cruise back to his favorite form of exercise -- running. He runs from Prague to Langley, Virginia, and back to Europe. The whole scenario conveniently allows Mr. Cruise to make the mission his very own, his and his only. As usual, things just happen to him through no fault of his own -- the quintessential Cruise.

Although the movie does have its moments, there are definite discrepancies - an annoying one part high-tech and one part primitive methodology. For instance, the movie's centerpiece stunt is when Hunt attempts a computer robbery while hanging from the ceiling suspended by wires in highly-secured vault at CIA's Langley headquarters. As if nothing less will do, this security- obsessed stronghold can detect any light on the floor, the slightest move, or any change in human body temperature of more than one degree. Although by no means a novel idea, the scene is admittedly suspenseful, shot largely from slightly surreal aerial perspective - a definitive mark of de Palma's technical genius. Yet the teams's method of breaking into the CIA in the first place is elementary -- through a fire alarm diversion.

That's not all. The movie seems to insist so much on showcasing computer technology at the expense of leaving some very laughable, old hat gadgets and gimmicks in place. We see agents running all over the place downloading info, sending e- mails, breaking codes and watching the results on multiple live video screens, and all this cyber-slicksterdom is fine and dandy. Yet when it comes to the art of disguise, it is rather disconcerting and slightly anticlimactic to see Hunt ripping off a lifelike rubber mask. As if he had not heard of morphing as the latest in special effects.

Granted, there is the much-advertised ending chase sequence, which has Hunt perched atop a French (tres grand vitesse, very high speed) train, traveling through the Chunnel, with a bad guy in a helicopter above setting down to kill him. This scene has its moments, yet by high-budget action-movie standards it is pretty run-of-the-mill.

In the end, you'll remember little except the tune. Throughout the movie, we keep pining for some color, some personality, some character, but what we get instead resembles the flow-chart mind of Newt Gingrich -- no room for digression, wit, interpretation, or subtlety.