It's good...to a point

Rating: 7/10 (3 May 2006)

I got to see a sneak preview of the movie yesterday. Let me start of with the pros. Philip Seymour Hoffman is hands down one of the best villains portrayed to date. He carries with him an aura of brutality, cunning, and a seemingly mind-reading ability to know what's coming and how to outsmart Cruise and his cohorts. The plot is simple yet clever, portraying Hoffman as a dealer of "goods" in the black market. It also contains enough twists, turns, and latex masks to keep the audience interested, while not over-complicating the subject matter as the original Mission Impossible did to a certain extent. Cruise does a decent job as the super spy Ethan Hunt and Laurence Fishburne portrays the hard-ass, doesn't-always-play-by-the-rules head of the IMF very well. The actions scenes are great, though perhaps too sparse.
It wasn't perfect. Cruise came up short numerous times when trying to carry over intensity. Despite the downright sadistic bad guy, a sense of foolishness permeated throughout the movie, due in part to the sappy ending, but also due to Ving Rhames being demoted to the stereotypical black-guy-whose-always-the-comic-relief character. Another problem was the attempt by the producers to make the actions scenes more "realistic". Apparently this means getting insane closeups in the middle of a gun fight along with camera shaking that would rival withdrawal symptoms, often rendering the scenes confusing and disappointing. Even still, the action scenes contain enough suspense, gadgets, and guns to hold the attention of the audience, even if camera work isn't on par. Predictably, the attempts at making Cruise a romantic fell flat, as they seem to be no more than an attempt to appeal to Cruise's waning female fan base. Though the love interest in the film (Keri Russell) was aptly played, the whole romance aspect seemed out of place in a movie whose predecessors seemed dedicated to violence and brutality.
An enjoyable action flick with some pretty good scenes as well as a well-executed (no pun intended) antagonist...if you can deal with the sappy romance and lame attempts at humor interspersed within the film.