Uncomplicated but unlucid spy trickery, nominally based on the late-Sixties-into-early-Seventies TV show. The star-hyphen-producer, Tom Cruise, has transformed the teamwork concept, however, into more of a ball-hog concept. Even more tightly wound than usual -- with, after all, the fate of the free world on his shoulders -- Cruise has the air of a young man who imagines that maturity can be attained through eight cups of coffee. Alongside veterans such as Jon Voight and Vanessa Redgrave, he seems a mere child: not the best choice to shoulder the fate of the free world. The finale on a bullet train -- and by on, you should not understand aboard, you should understand on top of -- entails some highly curious effects of wind and speed, the only notable elements of originality in the movie, devalued a little, nevertheless, by their out-of-this-world cartoonishness. Brian De Palma's side-tilted and up-angled cameras are sometimes frivolously diverting. And it is invariably fun whenever -- very infrequently -- the old Lalo Schifrin TV theme music starts up, just as it's invariably fun whenever that twangy 007 theme starts up in a Bond movie. Emmanuelle Béart, Henry Czerny, Ving Rhames, Jean Reno. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
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