Mission: Impossible ★★★★☆

There were a lot of movies that I wasn't allowed to see as a child. This wasn't one of them. I saw this when I was young enough both to not question the silly gadgets that barely make sense, and to not understand the meaning of them. Why does Ethan Hunt have a thingy he has to screw onto the pay phone? And what does it do? Apparently...it encrypts the call? How does putting a gadget on top of a zip drive and watching the number go up indicate that it's a tracking device? How does sending a usenet message to "Max@Job 3:14" actually successfully get a message to Max???? All these silly gadgets endear me to this movie, even as I think about how I loathe when modern movies bypass plot problems by duct taping over them with silly future tech. Instead of being overwhelmed by tech, this movie is grounded in the realism of the analog film of the 90s, filming on location with sparse CGI as far as I could tell, excepting the helicopter in the tunnel at the end. Tech isn't at the center of this movie, instead Ethan's quest to figure out the motives of his team members is what makes this movie exciting to watch. At the same time, it's unfortunate that the movie uses the lead female character as an object to develop not her own character, but to develop the hero and villain's characters. The hero almost loses the battle due to his weakness in being tempted by her, and the villain shows his villainy by coldly discarding her.

Overall, if you're willing to laugh at the silly bits, this movie is worth a watch. 4 out of 5 stars.