Mission: Impossible (1996)

Most people think so. 82% of audiences gave it a thumbs up, by Google's archived audience score. Critics gave it 63%.

When Ethan Hunt, the leader of a crack espionage team whose perilous operation has gone awry with no explanation, discovers that a mole has penetrated the CIA, he's surprised to learn that he's the prime suspect. To clear his name, Hunt now must ferret out the real double agent and, in the process, even the score. Wikipedia ↗

Mission: Impossible is a 1996 American spy film directed by Brian De Palma, the first in what would become one of cinema's most durable action franchises. Tom Cruise stars as Ethan Hunt, a young IMF agent whose entire team is killed during a botched operation in Prague, leaving him the prime suspect in the deaths and the theft of a CIA NOC list — the real identities of undercover agents worldwide. Framed and disavowed, Hunt must assemble a team of outcasts to steal the real NOC list from CIA headquarters to flush out the mole who betrayed his team.

Brian De Palma brought his signature visual style — elaborate tracking shots, split-screen compositions, canted angles, and Hitchcockian suspense — to create an espionage thriller that prioritized tension and paranoia over pure action. The centerpiece sequence, in which Hunt infiltrates a vault at CIA headquarters by descending from the ceiling on a wire in complete silence while avoiding pressure-sensitive floors, heat-detecting lasers, and a technician's cough, was a masterclass in sustained suspense that remains the franchise's most iconic scene. Danny Elfman's arrangement of Lalo Schifrin's iconic theme music brought the classic television melody into the blockbuster era.

Mission: Impossible earned $457 million worldwide, establishing the franchise that would grow in ambition and stunt complexity with each successive installment.