The Non-Official Cover (NOC) list in Mission: Impossible
No self-respecting spy thriller is complete without a MacGuffin, and the opening chapter of the phenomenally successful Mission: Impossible franchise is no exception. Director Brian De Palma’s 1996 movie uses a valuable administrative item – the Non-Official Cover (NOC) list – to challenge loyalties, reveal criminality and generally cause mayhem for a team of Impossible Missions Force agents, led by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight).
Tasked with preventing the theft of the list from the American Embassy in Prague, Phelps and his team – including Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) – fail in their objectives. The list is stolen, the team is killed, and it seems that Hunt is the only survivor – making him also the main suspect. Hunt flees, determined to clear his name and solve the mystery, and finds himself pursuing the NOC list along with many other characters with more sinister agendas.
Here, De Palma takes The Maltese Falcon approach to the MacGuffin and increases the drama by increasing the stakes. While in the John Huston movie, murder was committed, in Mission: Impossible, murder is committed, but more lives are at stake. Hunt must secure the list to prevent other IMF agents being vulnerable to fatal attack. It is the relationship of the MacGuffin to these unseen individuals that makes it such an important plot device.