What Mission Impossible is all about!

Rating: 9/10 (17 March 2009)

This was genuinely one of the first movies of the summer that I enjoyed when it came out. I was in India at the time, so I was lucky to see it in a movie cineplex which offered undubbed English versions of films, and it was worth it. I didn't expect much from it initially but it was literally an adrenaline ride all throughout - sheer action, not the stylized nonsense that was MI:2.
JJ Abrams' direction and Orci/Kurtzman's writing team is absolute ace in this film. The plot feels like a real return to Mission Impossible - instead of a megalomaniacal Bond-esquire plan as in the second film, we have an arms/bioweapons dealer who wants to acquire a very expensive, very dangerous bioweapon of unknoown power referred to as the "Rabbit's Foot". Ethan Hunt is sent from retirement from active duty to rescue his former trainee, who has been captured by the arms dealer. The mission fails at almost literally the last second, but not before she's able to tell Ethan of a traitor inside of IMF (hearkening back to the first film). Ethan's wife is eventually captured by the arms dealer, and, driven by revenge, he goes to heavy lengths to retrieve her and bring the dealer to justice.
This film has a slew of strengths. Tom Cruise, for all of his media publicity and stunts, is an amazing actor, and he delivers the familiar Ethan Hunt while adding something new to his role. Ving Rhames comes back as Luthor Stickel, his partner, and he has three more wingmen in his crew, two of them played by Simon Pegg and Maggie Q. All of them, while relatively underdeveloped, play their parts well. My biggest problem with the second Mission Impossible has always been that the movie threw out the essence of the Mission Impossible TV and film franchise - namely, teamwork - to create a movie starring a character from the Mission Impossible series in a James Bond plot playing a James Bond style character. While this is good for James Bond, it is terrible for Ethan Hunt, who plays the pointman but actually has significant backup from the others on his team. This isn't to say Hunt's character isn't memorable - he's still the main hero of the story.
The most impressive performance probably comes from the villain, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. He's not invincible or more powerful than the heroes, but he causes some pain and suffering to them which was quite a shock to me. The only weak point of this film, I believe, is the underdeveloped romance between Ethan Hunt and his nurse fiancée/wife who ends up kidnapped later in the film. Although well intentioned as a plot device, you don't really feel anything for her on your own. The emotion and sense of suspense comes from Cruise's acting as Ethan Hunt, not from the actress.
Otherwise, the action sequences and character pieces are brilliant. Most of the negative reviews that I've read have been nasty diatribes on Cruise's character in his personal life - which, while admittedly shady, have no bearing on his excellent performance in this film. If they made a fourth one in a similar bearing, I would probably line up to watch it.