Mission: Impossible (1996) (Remastered 25th Anniversary Edition) [Blu-Ray]

Director: Brian De Palma

Cast: Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Béart

Release Date: May 18, 2021

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Disc Rating: 7.5/10

Synopsis:

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is a top-secret agent, framed for the deaths of his espionage team. Fleeing from government assassins, breaking into the CIA’s most impenetrable vault, clinging to the roof of a speeding bullet train, Hunt races like a burning fuse to stay one step ahead of his pursuers…and draw one step closer to discovering the shocking truth.

Please Note: Paramount Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Post. The opinions I share are my own.

Celebrating its 25^th anniversary this year, the original Tom Cruise led ‘Mission: Impossible’ film directed by Brian De Palma returns home on Blu-ray newly remastered. The first installment in the successful film franchise accompanies IMF agent Ethan Hunt as he is betrayed and forced to bear witness to the eradication of his team only to be accused of everything by the agency he works for. Unwilling to accept his fate and take the blame, Ethan sets out to recruit other talented ex-agents in order to pull off a ridiculously difficult heist, the prize of which being the bargaining chip he needs to uncover the shocking truth of what really occurred on that mission gone terribly wrong.

The ‘Mission: Impossible’ 25^th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray release brings the 1996 classic that kick started the Tom Cruise led film franchise back home in a Blu-ray release that sports a newly remastered high definition video presentation, accompanied by a Dolby TrueHD multichannel soundtrack that both deliver nicely. The film still holds up quite well in many areas and while some of the effects feel a bit aged, the film is far from dated in other departments; still serving up a tense, entertaining and just plain enjoyable mystery with some solid action pieces sprinkled throughout. While I don’t own any of the previous Blu-ray editions of the film, word of mouth seems to imply that the presentation included on them was lackluster to say the least, with a somewhat disappointing video presentation paired with a lossy Dolby Digital audio presentation. Even if I’m unable to personally provide any insight in regard to direct comparisons, the facts alone seem to say enough and after going through this new 25^th Anniversary Edition I can definitely say that the video and audio presentations provided here are quite nice and seem to be a huge step above the previous editions from the information I’ve been able to find around the web about them. For those of you who had been hoping to see a much needed upgrade arrive on Blu-ray at some point, this new release is definitely worth looking into, especially if you can find it at the right price.

Overall, the new 25^th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray release of ‘Mission: Impossible’ brings the original Tom Cruise led film home on Blu-ray once more, and almost surely looking and sounding better than it ever has before. Benefiting from a newly remastered video presentation and providing a Dolby TrueHD soundtrack in place of the lossy Dolby Digital soundtrack featured on the previous releases, it quickly proves itself to be a solid release where the others have been somewhat poorly received. The new release doesn’t offer anything fresh when it comes to extras, but fans of the film and the franchise as a whole who are still sticking with the Blu-ray format should be quite pleased with this upgrade for its technical merits alone. The release is definitely recommended for anyone wanting to upgrade their old release of the film, along with those who have managed to hold out for a remastered release such as this.

VIDEO:

The 25^th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray release of ‘Mission: Impossible’ features a remastered full 1080p High Definition presentation of the film with its original 2.39:1 Cinemascope Aspect Ratio. This remastered video presentation looks quite great as a whole and provides a sharp, smooth and nicely detailed presentation throughout, while still retaining its share of grain and other notable artifacts representative of its source material. Some of the onscreen content occasionally looks a bit washed or dull at times, yet nearly all of it seems to be intended for the look of the film and therefore can’t elicit too many complaints. The presentation holds up nicely even during the various darkly lit, fast moving and heavily populated moments throughout, never allowing anything onscreen to become sloppy or problematic along the way. Overall, this a quite capable high definition video presentation that fans should largely appreciate.

AUDIO:

The Blu-ray release features a 5.1 channel Dolby TrueHD soundtrack. This multichannel soundtrack is a definite upgrade from the previous Blu-ray releases just for the inclusion of a Dolby TrueHD soundtrack alone whereas the previous releases featured solely a lossy 5.1 Dolby Digital offering. This TrueHD soundtrack delivers a clean, crisp and at times nicely aggressive audio presentation that utilizes all five available channels to send the catchy theme song, along with action content, vehicle activity and more whipping throughout the various speakers on numerous occasions, and never causing any dialogue or other audio elements that might be occurring simultaneously to become distorted or rendered inaudible in the process. Overall, this is a pretty solid 5.1 Dolby TrueHD soundtrack that does its job quite nicely and shouldn’t disappoint.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The 25^th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray release of ‘Mission: Impossible’ features a number of enjoyable extras (along with a Digital code and a collectible IMF car decal), although all of it is previously released content available on prior releases. Included are ‘Mission: Impossible – Trailers’ featuring the theatrical trailers for all six films in the franchise so far (running approximately 2 minutes apiece), along with a collection of archival Behind the Scenes Featurettes including ‘Mission: Remarkable – 40 Years of Creating the Impossible’ (running approximately 11 minutes), ‘Mission: Explosive Exploits’ (approximately 5 minutes), ‘Mission: Spies Among Us’ (9 minutes), ‘Mission: Catching the Train’ (3 minutes), and ‘Mission: International Spy Museum’ (6 minutes). The release also includes ‘Mission: Agent Dossiers’ which features facts and details about seven of the film’s characters, along with a ‘Photo Galley’ and ‘Mission: Marketing’ which includes ‘2 Theatrical Trailers’ for the movie (approximately 3 minutes combined) and ‘9 TV Spots’ (4 minutes total). 2 promos celebrating the work of Cruise are also included: ‘Excellence in Film: Cruise’ (9 minutes) and ‘Generation: Cruise’ (5 minutes).

*Please note that the above images are taken from the Blu-Ray and resized. They will additionally suffer quality loss as a result of .jpg compression. Larger versions of each image can be viewed by clicking on the image. All images and content included on this Blu-Ray release are the property of their respective owners.

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Disc Rating: 7.5/10

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The Remastered ‘Mission: Impossible: 25^th Anniversary Edition’ is Now Available to Own on Blu-ray from Paramount Home Entertainment

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