Hoffman's Very Good, the rest is just ludicrous. Disenchanted once again.

Rating: 2/10 (26 July 2006)

There were enjoyable parts to this film, mostly the scenes with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but overall, this was a completely inert action film. Way too much was simply not believable or acceptable, even when you take into account the routine suspension of physics as we know them on planet Earth that happens frequently in action films.
That helicopter chase with them flying through the wind generators was just ludicrous. Why couldn't the pilot just pull up fifty feet and fly above the damn things? Even though the helicopter in the Chunnel at the end of the original Mission Impossible was equally as dumb, I enjoyed that because at least director Brian De Palma knew it was stupid and made the scene playful by adding one hairy stunt on top of another.
There is a lot in this film that has been stolen from other films. I know that everyone steals, but some people at least try to cover their tracks a little. But in the case of this film, strangely, I think the filmmakers simply may not know that the elements they stole were from other movies. There is a healthy dose of True Lies, License To Kill and On Her Majesty's Secret Service in Mission Impossible III.
The action is mostly incoherent, hard to follow and shot in a quick-cut, hyper-fast way that makes everything look unbelievable and implausible. Surprisingly, the stunt coordinator was Vic Armstrong who has arranged the stunts for several James Bond films (Die Another Day, The World Is Not Enough). He is obviously someone who knows what he's doing, so where did the failure occur?
In the case of Mission Impossible III, it is the filming of the stunt work by TV veteran director J.J. Abrams that is faulty. The other movies in the Mission Impossible series were directed by heavy visual stylists Brian De Palma and John Woo, but this third one has no filmic style at all and in many ways suffers for it.
I wanted to like this film and they did succeed in giving us a good villain (something missing from the recent James Bond films), but there is no evidence that this was intended. I think the filmmakers just got lucky with the casting of Phillip Seymour Hoffman who recognized this kind of film as a lark and seemed determined to have as much fun with the part as possible.
At one point when Tom Cruise is in full make-up so he looks like the villain played by Hoffman, I made a mental note to say something about Cruise's sense of humor and seeming relish at playing the villain while trying to remain the good guy when I stopped myself. It was really Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing this part, not Tom Cruise in make up, so it was once again Hoffman making something completely fun out what was probably dull on the page.
Regarding Cruise's sense of humor. . . well, it has become non-existent. There is a scene at a house party early in the film where all of the woman at the party are maneuvered by the script (rather unbelievably) into saying how sexually attractive they find Tom Cruise. This comes out of nowhere and seems to be here simply to massage Cruise's ego and help dispel the constant "gay" rumors that bedevil him. What has happened to Tom Cruise? He seems to have no sense of humor at all anymore and an ego that needs to be massaged by having all the extras fancy him. Whatever happened to that nice kid from Risky Business?
A personal peeve: when a person's heart stops beating and it is luckily re-started by an electric jolt, the person doesn't jump up completely coherent. If your heart has stopped, there is usually something very wrong with you physically and you're not likely to just wake up and go about your business as if nothing much has happened. I hate movies that do this because it is so misleading. Yet this medical lunacy is a major dramatic plot element in Mission Impossible III and was one of the main reasons I disliked the film.