Mission: Impossible

The first Mission: Impossible is a completely different from what the series would eventually evolve into later. If you watch the later installments and see Tom Cruise cling to the side of a flying plane, leap off a cliff, and treat gravity like an afterthought, then go back to watch this opening installment, you will find its a lot slower and more contained. Those outrageously dangerous, over the top stunts from the later entries have long been etched into your brain for this franchise, so revisiting the first film will naturally leave you with a sense of unfamiliarity. That is precisely the quality I love about it. This first film is far more of a spy thriller, not an action movie that nonstop fights from start to finish. The core of the first installment does not rely on those life threatening stunts to carry it. It follows the path of a covert spy operation and layer by layer puzzle solving, and Ethan Hunt spends most of the runtime trying to figure out who among the people around him can be trusted, with the entire film's tension unfolding around that sense of suspicion and the search for proof. While this movie is my least favourite of the franchise as it lacks the intensity of the later entries, I still love this as a great spy/espionage movie