Mission Impossible (1996)

With the 6th and presumably final film in the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible franchise coming out this summer I thought it might be fun to watch the whole series in the lead up to its release. The only Mission Impossible film I had seen previously was the original movie, which I saw on a high school debate bus trip in either late 1996 or early 1997. I thought the film held up pretty well, some of the twists are pretty obvious, especially in hindsight, but as a 1990's action movie its smarter then average and has a few good set pieces, best remembered being the break in and on site data retrieval at CIA headquarters with Tom Cruise suspended from a cable and dodging various alarm systems. However I thought the high point of the film was the failed mission in Prague, nice fake out casting of some fairly big names on the team and then killing them off in the first half hour or so (sorry 22 year old spoilers). ***