Christopher McQuarrie made his crew obsess over Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï — the quiet precision, the icy professionalism, the trench-coat silhouette of the assassin. Ilsa Faust is Alain Delon's samurai remade as a woman. The Vienna opera sequence pulls from Bernardo Bertolucci's visual sophistication. McQuarrie documented this in the DVD commentary, understanding that spycraft requires the aesthetic of European cool. Both films are on Criterion Channel.
The films that I've always been drawn to are movies that are about surgical precision... Movies like John Frankenheimer's Ronin, and Le Samourai, and Le Cercle Rouge. These films are very, very inspiring in how they tell a story through pure visuals, with very little dialogue.
— Christopher McQuarrie · Screen Rant
Films That Influenced Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
