Like the case with The Crow and many other soundtracks of late, there were two releases of Mission: Impossible. One contained songs inspired by the movie with only a few of the tracks actually appearing in the movie. This one, is the musical score which was written by Danny Elfman. When I heard he was the one writing the score, I assumed big things. I knew he could write action scores as was apparent by his Batman and Dick Tracy scores, so I was confident he would write a fitting score for the film. Unforunately he didn't. That's not to say I don't like Elfman anymore, I do, but this was a bad experience for me for the large part.
The soundtrack started off with promise with Sleeping Beauty which contains pieces from Lalo Schifrin's original television scores and starts with an awesome drum solo. The newer version of the Mission: Impossible Theme was pretty good and added a moderinzed twist to the classic theme, still way better than Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton's version. Again this is due to the fact that this theme was originally written by Lalo Schifrin. Had Elfman stuck with that type of music, it could have turned out better than it did. Unfortunately, what Elfman continues with occassionally contains some of Schifrin's music but it isn't as good as these early tracks. Probably the only track that does this successfully, and as I had hoped the entire would sound is The Heist, and it's follow up Uh-Oh!. In some cases, the best parts of the track end up in the closing seconds of a track as is the case with The Disc
Probably one of the better pieces that Elfman has written for this soundtrack, that don't contain any of Schifrin's music is Betrayal. It contains both orchestral music and the haunting sounds of a choir. It harkens back to something out of Batman, specifically the track Childhood Memories. As for pure action, the last four tracks dealing with the action on the TGV (or Tres Gran Vitte) are pretty good, the last one, Zoom B contains a reprise of the Mission: Impossible Theme. It's all pretty fast paced and exciting. I haven't bought another Elfman soundtrack since this one. It's not because I'm mad at him or that I hate him, it's just that I haven't heard anything from him that is as good as his scores from the late 80's. Avoid this one unless you really really want a good version of the Mission: Impossible Theme.
Total time: 52:30
1: Sleeping Beauty (2:28)
2: Mission: Impossible Theme (1:02)
3: Red Handed (4:21)
4: Big Trouble (5:33)
5: Love Theme? (2:21)
6: Mole Hunt (3:02)
7: The Disc (1:54)
8: Max Found (1:02)
9: Looking for "Job" (4:38)
10: Betrayal (2:56)
11: The Heist (5:46)
12: Uh-Oh! (1:28)
13: Biblical Revelation (1:33)
14: Phone Home (2:25)
15: Train Time (4:11)
16: Menage a Trois (2:55)
17: Zoom A (1:53)
18: Zoom B (2:54)