Search - Mission: Impossible on DVD

MPAA Rating: PG-13 Content Advisory: Violence, Adult Situations, Profanity Movie Release: 1996 DVD Release: 11/17/1998 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV,Pan and Scan Edition: Dual Layered Audio Tracks: English, French Subtitles: English, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 50 mins Studio: Paramount Total Copies: 20 Genres: Spy Film, Action, Action Thriller, Glamorized Spy Film, Tech Noir See Also: Mission: Impossible [10th Anniversary] [Special Collector's Edition], Mission: Impossible [HD DVD], Mission: Impossible [Blu-ray], Mission: Impossible [Special Collector' Edition]

After he is framed for the death of several colleagues and falsely branded a traitor, a secret agent embarks on a daring scheme to clear his name in this spy adventure. Though it drew its name from the familiar television series, director Brian DePalma's big-budget adaptation shares little more with the original show than the occasional self-destructing message and the name of team leader Jim Phelps (Jon Voight). The film focuses not on Phelps but his protégé, Ethan Hunt (a reserved Tom Cruise), who becomes a fugitive after taking the blame for a botched operation. He responds by banding together with a group of fellow renegades, and he is soon maneuvering his way through a twisted series of double crosses that mainly serve as excuses for spectacular high-tech action sequences. Much of the activity revolves around a missing computer disk, with the film's most famous scene depicting Hunt's delicate efforts to retrieve the disk from a secure, well-alarmed room in CIA headquarters. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Tom Cruise - Ethan Hunt
Jon Voight - Jim Phelps
Emmanuelle Béart - Claire
Henry Czerny - Kittridge
Jean Reno - Krieger

The movie itself is glorious hokum, propelled by a plot that stays light on sense and heavy on set pieces, but it is fun to watch. The DVD edition, likewise, is fun to watch, despite being light itself, this time in terms of extras -- viewers have a choice of the 2.35:1 non-anamorphic transfer or a cropped full-frame version, Dolby 5.1 or Dolby 2.0 English tracks and a French Dolby 2.0 track, Spanish subtitles, and the theatrical trailer. The disc is single-sided and dual-layered. Both transfers are of high quality, though so much information is lost in the pan-and-scan version that it seems almost not worth watching. The master print was certainly a good one, and the transfer itself is sharp, with good color qualities, no obvious compression artifacts, no obvious edge enhancement, and only a slight suggestion of tweaking in the levels to create a slightly brighter image. Blacks are strong, and there is no smearing of colors. The transfer works to the benefit of the visual effects, which are sometimes not to the best advantage of the film. On the audio side, the English Dolby 2.0 track lacks presence and punch, though music and dialogue are clear enough. The French Dolby 2.0 track is somewhat sharper, with more consistency in the effects. The voice dubbing on the French track is very well done, with excellent matching to lip movement and tonal qualities for each actor. The English Dolby 5.1 track is exceptional, however, with a firm bass, good presence, and excellent separation -- at times, the audio image is not only distinctly three-dimensional, but highly mobile as well. The overall quality of the release should satisfy both action fans and fans of Tom Cruise, but the lack of supplementary materials is likely to be a disappointment, even though this lack was typical of Paramount Video at the time of the initial DVD release (1998). By the time Mission: Impossible 2 hit DVD (2000), this attitude had altered somewhat. ~ Steven E. McDonald, All Movie Guide