2. Mission: Impossible
Director: Brian De Palma
Starring: Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Beart, Ving Rhames
An American agent, under false suspicion of disloyalty, must discover and expose the real spy without the help of his organisation.
At the time, Mission: Impossible was slick and stylish. It's still those things today, although it feels very 90s in its aesthetics and production design. However, that certainly doesn't dampen its fun factor. Cruise epitomised cool back then. His cockiness was infectious and his acting had a strong confidence not many leading men could boast back in 1996. He was one of the most successful actors working, and it showed in this performance. Brian De Palma (Scarface, The Untouchables) had a whole lotta fun making this movie — a distinctly different style from the master of macabre. De Palma does a fine job of engineering when to press the accelerator and when to build tension, leading this to be one of the most loved and distinctive movies of the 1990s.
