In Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning , Tom Cruise hangs from a flaming biplane and dodges missiles at the bottom of the ocean. But the movie’s most inspired stunt has nothing to do with death-defying acrobatics. It’s the return of CIA analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon).

Neither the character’s name nor the actor’s is likely to ring much of a bell. But you know him the moment you see him: the hapless, sweaty guy in an off-the-rack suit who keeps running to the toilet while Cruise’s Ethan Hunt descends from a ceiling vent to steal classified information from a seemingly impenetrable vault at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Nearly 30 years after the first Mission: Impossible movie, it remains one of the series’ most breathtaking action sequences, as fiendishly simple, and

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