Action pleasure!

Rating: 7/10 (15 January 2012)

The first Mission: Impossible was pretty enjoyable in my opinion, not great I thought but good entertaining action thriller worth more than one screening. I've never seen the TV-show so the plot was very different. I liked the first movie my but my reaction to John Woo's sequel was not quite so well. Number two was so crappy in every way apart for the entertaining action. There was almost no plot just a slap in the face of everyone who thought the first one had an interesting story. Action movies seldom have amazing stories and MI2 was to stupid even for an action movie. It is interesting how with Mission: Impossible 3 they managed to take a bit from both previous movies and make the best one yet. The plot in the first movie was pretty complex, maybe a bit too much and the plot in number two was to simple. This manages to place itself in the middle. No award winning writing but perfectly enough for this kind of movie. Tom Cruise is great and his character has some depth and development in this. Ethan Hunt feels more like a human than a superhero this time. This film contains quite a few characters of importance to the plot. There are several big names in this. Fishburne and Pegg are great additions. Michelle Monaghan actually has a character unlike the female in the second movie who seemed to be there only to be eye candy. The villain this time Philip Seymour Hoffman is a major improvement and by far the best bad guy in the series. It's not his scheme but the performance that makes his character intimidating. With his cool voice and serious appearance unlike the ridiculous villain in the previous movie. The action scenes have been toned down in this but in no way making them less entertaining quite the opposite actually. John Woo does cool action but this is much more satisfying. MI3 does feel like a step towards 007 kind of spy movie. No problem in that for me at least.
Final summary Mission: Impossible 3 is a greatly entertaining but mindless action pleasure. Style over substance definitely but a good one of those.