The inside story of how Tom Cruise and Brian de Palma made Mission Impossible

As the new ‘Mission: Impossible’ film ‘Dead Reckoning’ prepares to hit cinemas, Geoffrey Macnab looks back at how Tom Cruise and a run of celebrated directors transformed a Sixties TV series into a blockbuster franchise

You may well have seen the stunt already: Tom Cruise on a motorbike driving headlong off a cliff into a valley somewhere in Norway and then, a few nerve-wracking moments later, he finally opens his parachute. As his bike plummets toward the rocks below, he soars upward. Paramount leaked the video six months ago to whet appetites for the release of Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, out next month. Cruise has called it the most spectacular stunt in the movie and “the most dangerous thing he has ever attempted”.

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