This isn't MI:3; it's M:I, and the first worthy to carry that name.

Rating: 8/10 (2 May 2006)

I agree with most of the posted comments, it's easily the best of the three and I think the secret recipe this time is J.J. Abrams. Producer Cruise has surrounded himself with talented actors before (Henry Czerny, Jon Voight, Vanessa Redgrave in M:I and Anthony Hopkins and Dougray Scott in M:I 2) and it didn't work so well. He chose a vacuous hole as an actress for M:I 2 (Newton) so we don't buy the romance. He chose two talented directors (DePalma and Woo who have done far better work elsewhere) and it didn't help. Robert Towne did work in both scripts and his contribution didn't turn the movie into a cohesive whole. Both movies were a mess, with some great parts and a lot of bad parts.
J.J. Abrams has had years of work doing spy drama in Alias, and he seems to recognize how to bring the movie back to its roots.
I mean, essentially, that's what the TV series was, they had a mission and they'd carry it out in the most convoluted way possible, and the suspense was how they'd pull it off despite the million of things that could go wrong.
Abrams is like a magician. He knows the main plot is hokey so he has techniques to misdirect the audience, so we won't be poking sticks into the plot holes and we essentially buy the drama.
It also helps he brings in his own IMF team to make M:I 3, his scriptwriters from Alias, plus the fact he also writes scripts. Who else is better qualified in divining the scriptwriters' intention and directing the scene than one who was a member of the scriptwriting team? With a cohesive writer-director team, add a good team of actors (Laurence Fishburne, Billy Crudup, Simon Pegg and the two female leads, Michelle Monaghan and Keri Russell) plus a great scorer (Michael Giacchino who did a great John Barry impression for The Incredibles, doing a great Lalo Schifrin adaptation here), it's like an engine with all cylinders firing in perfect tune, the audience is taken for quite a wild ride.
Even the essence of the story, that they are looking for the "rabbit's foot", Simon Pegg's explanation is brushed off as "It could be my imagination", and when Fishburne was about to explain it, he didn't! It's a McGuffin, and it's a nod to Hitchcock. In the end, Abrams winked at us and we still ended up grateful for the experience.