On Screens Big or Small, the Mission Is the Same

Good morning, Mr. Phenom.

Just as the small screen constantly borrows from the big, feature films have been getting ideas from television for years. In the latter case, that usually means turning bad into worse.

But the freshly arrived “Mission: Impossible,” starring Tom Cruise, is that rare TV-bred theatrical film (“The Fugitive” of 1993 is another) that is considerably more fun and suspenseful than the likable classic series from which it comes.

Technology deserves some of the credit. “Mission: Impossible” the movie preserves Lalo Schifrin’s pulsating score and enough signature traits of the series (“Good morning, Mr. Phelps”) for minor nostalgia, but makes its biggest impression with varooming high-tech special effects that transform an irrelevant (so who really cares?) plot into something stunning that holds you on the edge of your seat before blasting you out of it. Even at its enjoyable best, television’s IMF (Impossible Missions Force) never did that.

What the movie and series share, though, is an outlook in sync with our eternal need to funnel life’s conflicts and complexities into cozy niches inhabited by easy answers to knotty problems, a world view that classifies everything in oversimplified extremes of good and bad.

As in the universe of TV itself, there is darkness and light here, crime and illegality. Only a few blemished TV protagonists manage to coexist with the public’s zest for absolutes. One is on ABC’s “NYPD Blue,” where Dennis Franz’s volatile Andy Sipowicz is a recovering drunk who retains wide appeal while appearing to be a sometime racist. Meanwhile, Sam Waterston’s Jack McCoy, lead prosecutor on NBC’s “Law & Order,” is at once magnetic and gratingly arrogant, so smug about himself, in fact, that at times you find yourself pulling for the defendants in his cross-hairs even when they are obviously guilty.

And resuming June 11 on cable’s A&E; network is “Cracker,” the British series whose hero (ferociously played by Robbie Coltrane) is a caustic police psychologist with flaws as big as craters. Besides being brilliant and somehow amiable, he also happens to be an over-eating, over-drinking, over-gambling lousy father and philanderer who has even resorted to stealing from his wife’s purse to finance his adventures at the track.

In the main, though, most of us seek entertainment that bypasses the paradoxes, perplexing crossroads and difficult choices that confront us in life and instead delivers heroes in whom we can believe unequivocally, no questions asked.

Cruise fulfills that role in “Mission: Impossible,” as did regulars from the original series that flourished in the Cold War era, airing on CBS from 1967 to 1973 preceding a long run in syndication. A revival lasted two seasons after surfacing on ABC in 1988, but created barely a divot compared with the vastly deeper footprints of the earlier series.

Each episode of the latter opened with the IMF leader (Peter Graves, as Jim Phelps, succeeded Steven Hill after the first season) in an obscure location getting a self-destructing audiotape message giving details of a secret mission (“should you decide to accept it”) whose target most often was a sneering petty despot in an unnamed communist country (only late in their run did the IMF go after organized crime) causing problems for the Free World. The means of stopping him was an intricate operation that relied heavily on deception, split-second timing and perfect execution by each highly specialized member of the team.

Naturally the selection process was crucial, and early in each episode Phelps would go through the motions of carefully weighing the qualifications of potential participants in the mission, although the IMF rarely varied from week to week.

Most memorable were charter members Martin Landau, as disguise maven Rollin Hand, and his wife, Barbara Bain, as Cinnamon Carter, the IMF’s official babe whose specialty was charming the bad guys. Greg Morris was electronics whiz Barney Collier and wide-bodied Peter Lupus was strongman Willie Armitage, who spoke about three words a season.

These kids were not only incredibly skilled and gutsy but totally team oriented. You’d think that just once Phelps would pinch Cinnamon on the butt and get decked for his trouble (or vice versa), that Barney would object to Rollin always getting to wear exotic rubber masks while he fiddled with wires, that exhausted Willie would refuse to do any more heavy lifting. But not these automatons. No ego tantrums or petty jealousies here, even though you might expect some testiness from artists working so closely together.

A few personality glitches do surface in the movie, where Jon Voight is Phelps, Cruise gets to wear the masks and also throw his weight around (literally, atop a speeding train), and the other special skills sort of get shared.

But the movie’s characters are only marginally more humanoid than their predecessors. We know virtually nothing about IMFers past or present beyond their work on the mission. And even here, their nobility is defined less by what they do than by the villainy of their foes. To put it simply, these government-sponsored grifters are virtuous because their marks are evil. Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is obviously good because those who oppose him are as obviously bad. No questions, no shadings, no fluctuations.

Big screen or small screen, there is no room in this Hollywood cocoon for ambivalence of the sort found in the real world, where even some heroes develop possible blemishes. Where questions raised about widely admired Adm. Jeremy Michael Boorda’s combat decorations may have led him to commit suicide. Where the “freemen” of Montana, once icons of the anti-government “patriot” movement, are now being reviled even by some of their former supporters. Where nothing is quite as clear as in an entertainment realm where the mission, never ambiguity, is the message.