The third times the charm

Rating: 6/10 (5 November 2006)

For about the first hour and a half Mission: Impossible 3 is the most intense and exciting and quite possibly the sharpest executed Mission yet, but once it gets to the last twenty minutes things start to fall a little out of place, but your heart will be pounding until the last frame. The film tries to combine elements of the first two films; the intelligence and surprising plot twist of the first film, and the intense, loud action of the second, but part three does try to do one thing different that has yet to be done; giving our main hero and lead spy, Ethan Hunt a personal life, and you don't have to have seen True Lies or the first few episodes of Alias (which was created by J.J. Abrams) to know that spies can't have a personal life, it just flat out doesn't work. Just ask Jason Bourne. I originally thought, "Well this is going to be interesting, it's going to get really personal, and I bet that'll make it much more intense. Cool." But what this really does is shift the focus of the film from "the mission" to Hunt's wife, whose life is now in jeopardy. Hmmm... that doesn't sound much different from the last thirty minutes of M:I-2 does it?
M:I:III isn't really that much different from the other films in the series, and some people might come out saying that this installment is the best of the series. The film does show us for the first time just how a real IMF team carries out missions, which is kind of strange to think that only by the time we get to the third film in the series that it feels like we're seeing it all for the first time. And do you remember how in the first two movies Hunt used a number of face masks to disguise himself? Well we finally get to see where those masks come from and how they are made, and we also get to see how they get their voice to pull the whole trick off, which was actually pretty neat to watch. What's also pretty cool is the variety of missions and different locations that M:I:III travels to; from Berlin to Washington, D.C. to Vatican City and finally ending up in Shanghai, which all makes for some very interesting scenery.
The plot is somewhat hard to explain, mostly because it's so vague it's really hard to conclude just what in the hell was actually going on. It's not quite complicated in a fun and interesting way like the first film, and it's not as easy to follow as the second. The film is over stuff with big action stunts and loud shootouts. This film is easily packed with more action than the first two films combined, but there's no real flow to it all like M:I-2, but some of these scenes early on are quite exciting and highly energetic and thrilling, like one particular scene where Hunt has to jump off the roof a skyscraper in Shanghai (which looks like an amazing city at night I must say) only to swing over and crash on top of the building next to it, but overall this movie does feel like a really intense two hour episode of Alias, and I'd expect a little more from Cruise, but this is pretty much exactly what I would have expected from director Abrams.
The romance that the film is built upon isn't that convincing, probably just as convincing as the one in the last movie, but here we are just forced to "accept it" and move on. The film also tries to inject a little humor that wasn't really present in the first two films. Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg plays Hunt's techno. guru that did manage to make me laugh, but casting Pegg in a small role wasn't the only good choice in casting, no; the film is pretty well cast throughout; from Keri Russell as Hunt's protégé to Billy Crudup as an IMF team manager, Laurence Fishburne as the IMF operations director and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the icy villain, but they are all underused, which is a damn shame, and even though these are all great choices and it certainly keeps the film entertaining and exciting.
Part of M:I:III is brilliant and some of the best moments in the series. The cinematography is absolutely great, the lighting was brilliant and the action is very intense, but some of it should have been saved for the ending. The first hour is amazing, but the second hour doesn't really surpass what we've seen in the first, and it shouldn't be that way. The first two Mission films peaked with excitement with their finales; with the train sequence in the first and that awesome motorcycle chase and fist fight in the second, and the film tries a little too hard to play it safe in the end, it would have been better if they had just allowed it to take a few more risks, but it chickens out. I would recommend checking out M:I:III if you liked parts one and two, and finishing up at just a little over two hours long, is very well paced and NEVER has a dull moment, and make sure to expect the impossible. This is one of the best action films of the year, and it's sure to push your adrenaline levels to the max. So pop some popcorn, turn off the lights, crank up the surround sound and have some fun!