Movie Info

Mission Impossible III

Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt in Tom Cruise Impossibl....oh wait, I mean Mission Impossible III. This time around, Cruise has gotten J.J. Abrams to direct the film. Abrams is the creator of Lost and Alias, two hit TV shows. I didn't really enjoy the first two movies so does Abrams score with the third installment? Read on and find out.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is back. After retiring from active duty from IMF and taking up a position as a trainer, Ethan Hunt has found his true love and is engaged to Julia (Michelle Monaghan). However Hunt is forced back into service to rescue an agent he trained. This puts Hunt head to head with arms dealer Own Davian (Philip Seymour). Davian gets personal and kidnaps Julia. Alongside his new IMF team consisting of Luther (Ving Rhames), Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Zhen (Maggie Q), Hunt tries to obtain something called the "Rabbit's Foot". Now this being Mission Impossible and not Mission Difficult, there are lots of plot twists throughout the movie.

J.J. Abrams initially does a great job introducing the story, the villains and Hunt's relationship with Julia. However, the rest of the movie wasn't as good. With such talented actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laurence Fishburne, you would expect a great story with great characterization. No, the writers decided that this was indeed another Tom Cruise-centric movie. No doubt the suits were thinking that the movie would sell with just Cruise's name. This didn't work as the initial box office numbers were disappointing.

As I said before, the first part of the movie was great. There was a great build-up and lots of great action scenes. The latter part of the movie felt rushed. Hunt had the impossible task of getting the "Rabbit's Foot". Then we skip ahead and Hunt has the Rabbit's Foot. What happened? We don't know, Hunt just did his thing off-camera. I didn't pay my admission fee to watch an action flick where the action happens off-screen. Philip Seymour Hoffman was definitely underused. His character had this potential of being a crazy, evil villain. However, at the end of the movie, you had the slightly overweight Hoffman actually fighting Ethan Hunt. WTF?!! Yeah, Ethan Hunt was incapacitated to a degree, but that's a mismatch in any movie. To add insult to injury, Davian dies an off-screen death and is never referenced after that.

One last thing to note is that in the first two films, the challenges that Ethan Hunt had to face were...well, impossible. In MI:3, the missions and tasks were hurried and there was no real sense of danger to Hunt.

With the plot centralized on Hunt's relationship to Julia, this movie went from a high-riding, thrill-seeking, action film to a boring wannabe drama. There's a reason why the James Bond films are so fun to watch. Bond is never characterized too deeply. It's just action, toys and women. Mission Impossible? It's just Tom Cruise and he's getting really old-looking.

The film cost 160 million dollars to make. This definitely is seen in the movie. With some great action scenes (the bridge battle and the Vatican raid), the movie is on par with current action movies. There's lots of explosions and gunfire for those fans of violence (like me). However, perhaps there was too much spent in the first action sequences because the latter part of the movie had simpler scenes with very few explosions.

I'd write about the other characters, but I couldn't really find much to write about. Like Anthony Hopkin's role in MI:2, many great actors were wasted in this film. One thing I did like was the added conversation of a few members of IMF. It was nice to see some other characters get some lines in the movie (however little it may be).

So is Mission Impossible 3 worth seeing? As a cheap movie yes. I would definitely have been disappointed if I had to pay full admission to watch the movie. I believe it is strike three for the trilogy. Getting J.J. Abrams onboard was a good idea, but ultimately it didn't help when the storyline was so weak (it was co-written by Abrams).

Perhaps the next move by the studio will be to get rid of Tom Cruise and go the way of James Bond. Bring in another actor and get a team spy movie going. That would definitely be more appealing to me.

Dragoncrypt