Mission: Impossible (1996)
1996 Brian De Palma spy thriller launching the Tom Cruise franchise. Mission: Impossible is Brian De Palma's 1996 American spy thriller and the franchise launcher that has produced multiple sequels across three decades.
Writer: Robert Towne
Robert Towne won the Academy Award for Chinatown, a screenplay taught more often than any other American example, built on a detective who solves the case and thereby destroys the person he was protecting.
He wanted a different ending. Polanski insisted on the bleaker version and Towne objected at the time, later conceding the director was right.
He also wrote The Last Detail and Shampoo, did uncredited work on The Godfather and Bonnie and Clyde, and his rewriting reputation was such that studios hired him specifically to fix third acts.
