Shoes Please (My Favourite Mission: Impossible Moment)

I wouldn't describe myself as a fan of Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible film series: I wouldn't, for example, queue up at the cinema to see one. But I'd probably watch if shown on TV, in much the same way as I'd always watch a Bond movie, without ever really being interested in the stories or characters, or excited by the action sequences and stunts.

Ultimately, guns and gadgets - as well as endless car chases and large explosions - mean nothing to me. And, as much as I enjoyed Simon Pegg's performances in Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007), I could do without him providing comic relief as the IMF's most unlikely (and perhaps most irritating) field agent Benji Dunn.         

What I do admire about the films, however, are the high production values and, of course, the iconic theme music, based on Lalo Schifrin's original version for the TV series (1966-73). I also like those queer little moments that are more memorable than the scenes within which they're embedded.

For example, in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015), the fifth installment in the series, there's an assassination scene set at the Vienna State Opera which ends with Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) fleeing across the rooftop accompanied by an undercover MI6 agent, Ilsa Faust, played by the sublimely beautiful Anglo-Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson.

In order to facilitate their escape, she asks Hunt to take off her shoes. It's a simple and practical request, but it's also by far the most captivating and erotically charged moment in the entire film; one that nicely follows on from an earlier scene, set in a torture chamber, where she and Hunt meet for the first time and he compliments her on her footwear (which she has removed in anticipation of trouble).

Apparently, the idea of Ilsa removing her shoes was Cruise's. I don't know what that tells us (if anything) about him, or what he imagined the gesture might indicate to audiences in the context of the film, but, as a podophile and shoe fetishist, I'm grateful for it.*  

* Note: I suppose it's meant to indicate her trust in and sexual attraction to Hunt. As a rule, when a woman instructs you to remove her shoes and points her naked foot in your face she is inviting you to kiss her instep and admire the length of her legs. 

See: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, (dir. Christopher McQuarrie, 2015). The 'shoes please' incident on the roof of the Vienna State Opera, with Cruise and Ferguson, can be viewed on YouTube by clicking here.