So I hear good things about this franchise, and even though the early ones aren’t where the good things get said… well, you have to start at the beginning, right?

In this case, it helps that the beginning is so long ago (1996) that the movie feels like a period piece. The “high tech spy stuff” is all super-legacy — not just in the sense that much of it is now normal tech, but in the aesthetics of it. Like, all kinds of fancy high-tech devices have big bulky beige cases with LED lights on them. It’s really obvious that this is a movie made before Steve Jobs returned to Apple, and with no reference at all to what he was up to at NeXT.

It’s even more fun with the software. This was made in the early days of the internet, when everything was moving so fast that the internet felt and looked qualitatively different at six months’ time. So their “big throbbing N” was probably already obsolete by the time the movie launched, but the constant references to “Usenet” are even more hilarious, particularly given that the movie gives zero shits about what Usenet is, and just uses it as a way to send emails (which also make no sense at all in their operation). You couldn’t make a movie this wrong about computers now, just because everyone has actually used one, a fact that wasn’t true back then, quite obviously.

Beyond the retro-technology, this is also a movie shot in a retro style: Despite being a big summer action movie, it’s so slow and low-key. People just stand around in music-free scenes talking. You’d never see that in a movie like this today, where everything must be in frenetic motion at all times.

It’s also retro in that the plot is basically a pile of nonsense. Like, some of the nonsense is intentional: You’re presumably supposed to be sitting there saying “NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE” as the initial events happen, given that it turns out later they were all an elaborate sting operation and not real at all. But… if it’s obviously nonsense to us at home, wouldn’t it have been equally nonsensical to the brilliant super-spies who got fooled by it? And then later, when there are some more blindingly obvious plot points that these genius superspies don’t pick up on (“You’re the only person who survived this sting, therefore you must be the traitor.” Later: “Oh hey, another person survived, well, she can definitely be trusted fully and is definitely not the traitor.”), it starts to feel like maybe these superspies are… kinda stupid?

So I don’t think it’s actually a great movie, but it is fun, as old-timey action movies go. The setpiece don’t-call-it-a-heist in the middle is satisfying, Vanessa Redgrave is great playing against Cruise, and while the movie definitely has some clear CG in it, it’s got enough practical effects to still feel distinctively physical.

Not a great movie, but a great exemplar of mid-90s spy movies and a fun watch beside.