What I'm selling and who I'm selling it to should be the last thing you're concerned about... Ethan.

Rating: 8/10 (26 August 2010)

Mission: Impossible III is the third film based on the spy-themed television series Mission: Impossible. It's directed by J. J. Abrams and stars Tom Cruise (reprising his role of IMF agent Ethan Hunt), Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Michelle Monaghan, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Billy Crudup, Laurence Fishburne, Maggie Q & Simon Pegg. Location filming was spread across China (Shanghai and Xitang), Germany (Berlin), Italy (Rome and Caserta), the United States (California and Virginia), and Vatican City.
Ethan Hunt has retired from active duty and is enjoying contented bliss with his future wife Julia (Monaghan). However, he is called back into action to help rescue one of his former IMF pupils from the bad guys. This brings Hunt into a conflict with evil arms dealer Owen Davian (Hoffman) and sets the wheels in motion for a good versus bad battle that could spell disaster for anyone close to Ethan.
If you believed the Tom Cruise haters then you would think that he needed a hit so badly he trundled out a second sequel to the popular Mission Impossible series. However, since this came a year after the gargantuan success of War of the Worlds, and two years after garnering praise for his turn in Michael Mann's Collateral, it's clear this is more than just a cash in job. Cruise cares about the franchise, and tho no quotes suggest it, he possibly felt that Mission Impossible 2 was tepid and not befitting the entertaining core he wants for the series. So enter J. J. Abrams, who slipped into the director's chair vacated by David Fincher (off to work on Zodiac) and Joe Carnahan (upset about the tone of the story). It was an inspired choice by Cruise, for Abrams, already a TV darling after Lost & Alias, wanted to personalise Hunt whilst returning to the techno trickery of Bruce Webber's original TV series. And he got it. What he also got was Cruise on mega action star wattage form and an end product to sit with the best action film's of the year. It also became easily the best film of the trilogy after the convoluted first film and John Woo's safe, but uninspired, sequel.
It's silly of course, very much so, but it's the kind of whizz bang silliness that often sinks lesser action movies. It's true to say as well that the personalisation of Hunt, IE: the dreaded romance angle, is nothing less than standard by the numbers fluff. The writing in truth could have done with spending more time with the splendidly vile Hoffman than with the Cruise & Monaghan (engaging and fine enough) axis. While the support cast all fade weakly into Cruise's shadow as he totally dominates from start to finish. But this is about bang for your buck nonsense, where excellently constructed action sequences flow thick and fast and the gadgets (brain bombs are just brilliant) are never in short supply. And so we come back to the Cruise haters, who, I can guarantee will hate this with their every breath. Because this is Cruise: The Movie, perhaps the ultimate superstar vehicle of the last decade? But whisper it to them quietly, he's pretty darn good at the action stuff, and Abrams knows this too, and directs accordingly. A third sequel will arrive in 2011, as an action movie fan I'll be first in the queue. 8/10