Mission Impossible

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: rewatch Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible with us and try to figure out what the hell is actually happening in that vault scene. Tom Cruise dangles, Jon Voight lurks, Jean Reno smokes, Ving Rhames types, and Emmanuelle Béart is up to something — we untangle the plot (allegedly), talk about how this launched a three-decade franchise on the back of one iconic set piece, and ask whether anyone in 1996 actually followed the double-crosses on first watch.