A excellent week-end popcorn flick

Rating: Null/10 (15 June 2006)

One of those movies you (nearly) don't bother to watch in french dubbed version (Philip Seymour Hoffman).
You sit back, relax and for 2 hours watch 500 actors and technicians spend $150,000,000 on explosions, jumps, runs, sights, choppers and automatic weapons gusts. There isn't any suspense, JJ Abrams thinks he's writing for television, so the movie is structured like a double-episode of an action TV show (season finale or opening of a good one like Prison Break or 24), no psychological portraits, valuable message on anything, soundtrack or funny parts, just a very enjoyable action scenes stream. And what a stream! The h.o.l.l.y.w.o.o.d. ending is kinda lame, some 'But Ethan Hunt have feelings now, he's a guy, just a guy, a simple guy, a simple guy with feelings' scenes are pretty annoying and some characters are almost badly written (Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q ones) but who cares ? That's not the point.
While Tom Cruise does his generic action hero thing again, PS Hoffman is simply amazing ; just imagine a mix between Clarence Boddicker, Hans Gruber and some cold eyed, blond haired torture radical (an evil Jack Bauer if you want).. That's his character in a good mood. And he's never in a good mood.
So it's action action boom boom reload I love her boom boom pam fizzz splash argh we did it with great camera works (Spy Game and The Bourne Identity cinematographer), neat actors (PSH, Laurence Fishburne, Billy Crudup) and several very very severe action scenes (the vatican stuff, the shanghai towers and the bridge mayhem).
Not to be compared to Lethal Weapons or the Die hard trilogy (because they're real trilogies) but a good Saturday night flick, valuable 'one shot action movie' to put at side with Speed or The Incredibles.
MI < MI-2 < MI-3 Brian De Palma < John Woo < JJ Abrams ??! Come on! Those movies are definitely tricky exercises to perform for Hollywood directors..