Mission implausible III

Rating: 6/10 (7 May 2006)

Lots of action, little sense! Good summer flick for those wanting to watch a "24" mentality movie with the usual "too fast and jerky to enjoy" action scenes. As usual: suspend all disbelief who enter here.
Intrepid super IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is called back from his "training only" life to rescue erstwhile trainee of his, who is the mandatory female "who kicks butt as good as the men" agent. In order to do so he has to leave his "out of the loop" fiancée ( a Doctor, of course! All agents wives have to be Doctors!), and hurry to Germany to extradite the agent.
The action scene that follows is the usual herky jerky, MTV slamma jamma, "wha's happenin here" rush that I couldn't wait to be over, so we could get on with the story involving Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has some wonderful lines as the ultimate Bond type baddie, but whose presence is sadly under used.
There is a scene on a long causeway (Chesapeake?), cloned from "True Lies" in which Hoffman is rescued, with resources only available to the US military, and as far as we can tell the newspapers don't pick up on this - and if they do what the hell is the explanation going to be? "Eh, well there were these terrorists on the bridge and we had to blow up half the D.C. commuters, and, no we don't know why we used a drone to over kill them, but trust us the US Govt. stopped a major threat to our country!"
Then it's off to China to run rampant in the streets of the largest police state in the World with nary a sign of any police or military. Wow, a real sleeping giant!
Hoffman, when we get to see him, is great. Cruise gets to sprint a lot. Soon enough he will be ambling along like Mike Douglas and Harrison Ford, so make hay.....I don't see this as a blockbuster, but it will do well enough with the summer crowd. Until Poseidon comes along, which, if it's done right, will at least have some: "who is going to die, and who isn't," tension.
Finally I know this is picky, but why does the hero always rush to rescue the damsel in distress, when he's miles away, and yet he never thinks to call ahead and have security on scene, or police, do it? I know, no dramatic tension!