The sequel to the original remake of Mission Impossible features, in my opinion, a scene of nearly Euripidean pathos: the anagnorisis 'recognition' of a philos after brutal death. In Euripides' play, Agave, the mother of Pentheus, has been knocked out of her phrenes and is unable to see correctly: she is unable to penetrate the 'mask' that surrounds her son and she mistakes him for a lion. In a scene of incredible power, Agave brandishes the head of her son like a trophy, as she proclaims victory over the enemy beast. It falls to Cadmus, sadly, to teach her how to see; slowly, Agave comes to her senses.
Agave: I don’t understand your utterance [epos], for I have become somehow 1270 sobered, changing from my former phrenes.
Only after Agave's phrenes return does she see and recognize her son:
Cadmus
Whose head do you hold in your hands?
Agave
A lion’s, as they who hunted him down said.
Cadmus
Examine it correctly then; it takes but little effort to see.
Agave
1280 Alas! What do I see? What is this that I carry in my hands?
In a parallel clip from MI:2, the villain's (possibly homoerotic) philos has captured the hero, Tom Cruise, and drags him before his master. (In a previous scene, the villain had in fact broken the philos's finger, but they appear to have made up.) Out of his phrenes, the villain brutally attacks Cruise, shooting his leg, kicking him, and then finally pumping his body full of bullets, in a Bacchant fury. Only after Cruise's death does there occur a moment of horrible anagnorisis, as the villain spots on Cruise's body the broken finger--and realizes that this is not the body of Tom Cruise. Ripping off the mask (remember that Dionsyus is the gods of disguises), the villain sees the awful truth: he has killed his philos! His scream of anguish precisely mirror's Agave's cry of penthos at the discovery of her similar tragic error.
