Mission impossible - action opening scene

 

The second mission impossible of the franchise, directed by John Woo, begins with a man (Tom Cruise) hanging off a cliff that he's climbing. Tom Cruise also produced this movie as well as starring in it. It creates tension in a number of ways and successfully gives the impression you're watching an action/ adventure movie.

A quick zoom in hooks us in right away, while it establishes where our main character is, it also amplifies how huge the scale of this setting is. I believe it’s mainly engaging because of how it shocks us. This man has no harness, no ropes, no safety ties- just a bag of chalk! He is climbing completely free hand (which the idea of is terrifying to me). The slow motion jumps, that seem impossible from the angle it’s shot at, make our stomachs turn. The soundtrack gets louder as he falls which adds to the jaw dropping effect. When the man comes in the helicopter we question if he’s an enemy or someone with a gun about to shoot him, the bomb-like package he shoots then reveals a pair of sunglasses so we are then rest assured. What also engages the audience, especially one of the year 2000 (when it was released) is the high tech screen edited imagery that tells us he’s likely an agent. 

The date is unclear from the opening, we know it’s not old fashioned from the technology they use. It’s most likely present day although because it was filmed around 20 years ago I wouldn't label it as a modern movie. It’s set on a cliff in what looks like a desert somewhere very remote. They mention later in the dialogue that he was ‘on holiday’ so he seems as though he’s alone which makes us more scared for him. It looks like a hot country and as th4e camera pans around him using fades we see a canyon behind him, you can assume he’s very high up.

The genre is action and we already get shots of  him in action on this cliff jumping from here to there within the first minute. Once it’s revealed to us he is working for some secret agent branch, we then assume there will be a lot more action scenes to come like; fight scenes, guns, knives, the whole lot. Even from the title we can gather he’ll go on a mission (probably impossible) and we will be following him as he does. 

The connotations that show us it’s an action film:

• The different angles; high, low, level

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  Changes of motion (slow)

• The Soundtrack is quiet and seems overpowered by the wind, the percussion in the music adds tension (like when he falls)

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  The change in music to the fanfare (mission impossible music) tells us the action is about to start

• The editing of quick camera cuts on each angle exaggerate the height he’s at 

• His costume looks very casual and not something you’d likely wear when climbing THAT

• His facial expressions show a hint of cockyness to him and his smoulder is quite the stereotypical one for agent like Mr Cruise himself- the look of ‘i’ve got it all under control’ which is the type of character we associate with an action movie

His character is clearly fearless, brave and incredibly strong. We can later see he is not just a climber but a spy or secret agent. The storyline is likely to follow a huge, impossible mission he takes on- given to us in the title. There’s likely to be a love interest as there always is in these James Bond esk movies. I think the beginning is also to show how skilled (the way he's climbing this cliff looks gravitationally undoable to me) so we have some hope for the ‘impossible’ mission and it’s a movie worth a watch.

In my opinion it has successfully displayed the action based theme in this opening sequence. Foreshadowing his big mission to come, I believe this is a movie I'd want to watch. It gets you excited for the lengths they’d go to in the action scenes, seeing as the first one is on a cliff, what else will they do?