Flat

Rating: 5/10 (21 May 2006)

The first was technically accomplished but a quart incomprehensible, the second was overcooked and underwhelming - a pretentious bore and four million years later it's the third, half a centilitre deeper than than it's predecessors, better rounded but curiously bereft of energy or involvement - in short, its flat. JJ Abrams, the televisual wunderkind was handpicked by the Crusier based on his success in similar genres, particularly a show called Alias which is apparently was inspired by...mission impossible! Who better to helm one then? Well I don't know but on this evidence, a movie director might have been a better bet. Abrams script makes the mistake of trying to humanise the action hero by showing us a smattering of his personal life and then, and i hope your sitting down, involving her in the plot. A terrific opening teaser sets the scene with Hoffman's villain asking a bound Cruise for information on the Rabbit's foot - the plot's maguffin. His wife is bound in a chair with a gun to her head and then nasty mock-Capote tells our hero that she'll self-destruct in 10 seconds if he doesn't give him the foot's location. I once read that Tony Benn and Neil Kinnock had a similar conversation about Michael Foot in the run up to the 1983 election but thats just Westminster tittle-tattle I'm sure. Anyway, following this tantalising sequence the movie runs into a pedestrian stride rather than the sprint we might have expected. The inner Hunt takes centre stage while the action winds down and although the movie is cluttered with gunfire, chases, running and the usual explosions, nothing sticks, probably because Abrams medium is television and what works there seems strangely so-so on the big screen. The original movie was well served by De Palma's technical acumen - a perfect partner for the tricksy, twisty-turny nature of the t.v show. There's none of that bravura direction on display third time round nor any stand out set piece to mark out the mission's 'impossible' promise. The first had the Langley theft and the Channel Tunnel finale - here its all low key and more real worldly - fine but this is Mission: Impossible and we expect a bit of the outlandish. Better than the second when all is said and done but not quite the shilling - M:I:3 is conspicuously bland - the next will need a more extravagant pair of hands at the wheel if we're going to be convinced to bankroll the Cruiser's next divorce. Are you listening short arse?