Mission Oceanpossible 11

I’ve been getting kind of excited about the new Mission Impossible coming out. It’s being helmed by J.J. Abrams, writer and director of the pilot episodes for ABC’s Lost, plus it has Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain, and if any of you all have seen Punch Drunk Love, you know he can be a kick ass bad guy. I’ll unashamedly admit that I enjoy almost every Tom Cruise movie I’ve seen. At least 75%, and that’s not too shabby.

When I was a kid I remember seeing De Palma’s first Mission Impossible (not that I yet knew who Brian De Palma was), but I liked it at the time, but remember being confused by the convoluted plot. So now that I’m infinitely more mature I figured I’d give the original MI another go.

There’s definitely some residual coolness, I really liked the opening in Prague, and the ending action piece with the train and the helicopter are still very impressive. De Palma really makes a stylish spy flick, I must say, but the plot is still a little too complex and the characters a little too simple. One thing that really stood out however was the planning sequence of the NOC list heist... remember Tom Cruise hanging by a thread in black clothes over the white floor, catching the sweat dripping off his brow with a rubber glove. Anyway, it was really reminiscent of the planning sequence of knocking over the Bellagio, the Mirage, and the MGM Grand in Ocean’s 11. The white room with the computer from MI actually reminds me a lot of the safe room in Ocean’s 11, George Clooney and Matt Damon’s outfits are even similar. In fact, even some of the lines were scarily similar. Remember Danny Ocean and Brad Pitt going over the impossible security systems? He says something like “The passwords, which we won’t have, and the retinal scans, which we can’t fake.” Tom Cruise says almost the exact same line, only some five or six years earlier. Plus, you may remember the gag of Ocean’s 11 running out of the hotel in SWAT gear, well, it’s the same in Mission Impossible, only firemen’s/firewomen’s uniforms.

Soderbergh you hack, you tasteful thief of the night. Today it was announced that Pacino is going to be in on Ocean’s 13. Now that I think about it, even the color (prominent neon blues and candle yellows) and style of Ocean’s 11 is similar to De Palma. Although, it could be argued that it purposefully references Mission Impossible in order to Scary Movie it. Well, it was Picasso that said that bad artist’s copy, great artist’s steal.