Analysis of Mission Impossible

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Analysis of Mission Impossible

The film ‘Mission impossible’, directed by Brian De Palma, was

released in 2001 staring the likes of Tom Cruise, Jon Voight and

Emmanuelle Beart. It is and action-thriller, based on the story of an

American agent, who, under false suspicion of disloyalty, must

discover and expose the real spy without the help of his organisation.

The film stars Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt (protagonist), part of a crack

squad of intelligence operatives, based upon the 1960’s T.V series. It

incorporates vast amounts of action within a complex and clever

storyline. The films target audience would most probably be younger

people (13-26) or people with a modern lifestyle as the film’s content

is fast and exciting, as well as being technologically advanced. The

film’s certification of P.G. also effects this audience bracket as the

younger viewers must be considered.

The film begins with a title sequence consisting of all the main

characters, shots of a burning fuse which represents a lack of time in

conjunction with the theme of the film and a selection of intriguing

action shots extracted from the film. The opening scene of the film

directly evolves you as the audience in a current mission of the

secret organisation in which a victim is being lured into a fake

situation and then drugged by the operatives. This enables the viewers

to be instantly part of the action of the film’s theme.

Representation of the hero plays a big role in this action/thriller

and is used for a variety of reasons. In this particular story the

hero is the character of ‘Ethan Hunt’ who shows a collection of

typical heroic characteristics throughout the film as well as playing

within the typical ‘hero’ story line. The character goes through a

series of challenges throughout the film surviving them all and then

finally achieving his goal. The hero is always played so that the

audiences become attached to him and the story allows the audience to

develop hatred for those working against the hero.

Certain symbolic techniques are used in the film to demonstrate the

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