Typical Tom Cruise Action Movie

Rating: 6/10 (29 August 2008)

I've never seen the 1960's TV series of the same name on which this film was based, so I find myself comparing it to other action flicks, and especially to other films starring Tom Cruise. I've never found Tom Cruise to be among the finest actors I've seen, but what I generally like about his performances and his movies was present here in great abundance. The movie is fun, fast paced and full of action and energy. At times it can leave you breathless. Those qualities sometimes become its weakness, too, though. It's almost too fast in a few places, leaving your head spinning around a plot that I didn't think was either well developed or well explained and the end result of some of the extreme action is that some parts of the movie can seem quite slow in comparison. Some of the action scenes in the movie (especially the helicopter chasing the train through the Chunnel) was a bit too over the top.
The movie centres around Ethan Hunt, a US secret agent who becomes suspected of treason after a mission he's on goes awry and his team is killed. The viewer knows he's innocent - the question is who's the real mole? I found reason to suspect a number of people - perhaps there were too many to suspect, actually. I don't want things spelled out too clearly, because that would take the fun away, but I like to be able to have a clear enough story to be able to make an intelligent guess rather than just a wildcard bet.
The performances here I thought were nothing to write home about. Not bad, but nobody really stood out to me as superb, either. It's a fair to middling action movie that's fun to watch - but there are better action movies out there. 6/10