Best Movie in the Series

Rating: 8/10 (4 May 2006)

A friend of mine used to gripe to me a lot that the Mission: Impossible movies resembled nothing of the television show. "There was hardly any killing," he told me. "There was just the mission. Get in, get out, and very low body count. The movies ain't like the show."
I did some research on my own and came to the same conclusion, though I was entertained by the movies, where as my friend was blah.
Too bad Tom Cruise brought his private life public.
He would have made my friend a fan.
Mission: Impossible III opens with Ethan Hunt (Cruise) watching his newly wed wife, Julia (Michelle Mongahan) strapped to a chair. The antagonist, arms dealer Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), threatens to shoot Julia if Hunt does not divulge the location of "the rabbit's foot." Hunt tries to stall for time, and Davian shoots her in the kneecap. Hunt honestly doesn't know where the rabbit's foot is, and then shoots Julia in the head.
Cue opening theme.
We see Hunt at an engagement party-his own. Bit of a rewind. Hunt's happy, having fun, and we find out Hunt "works" for the Department of Transportation. He gets a phone call asking him about an all-expenses paid trip to Mexico. Hunt tells Julia the office called and that he'll be right back.
He goes down to a Seven-Eleven where he meets his friend, John Musgrave (Billy Crudup). We learn Hunt's a training officer for IMF and left the field shortly after the events of MI-2. An agent he trained (Keri Russell) has gone missing while investigating Owen Davian. Hunt doesn't want to take the mission, but since Muskgrave is an old friend of his, Hunt accepts the mission.
He's given his team: Zheng (Maggie Q), who's a shooter as well as the team "looker" (in net speak, the hotness); Declan (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), the helicopter pilot; and returning member Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), hacker extraordinaire. They set up an elaborate plot to rescue the agent, and they get her on board the chopper when Hunt discovers a microchip in her brain with a small explosive charge-not big enough to do any real damage to anything, but enough to kill her. As the defibrillator charges, the explosive goes off, scrambling her brain.
Hunt's next step: to find Davian.
I'll stop there with plot details and hope the rest of you go to the theaters to complete the mission.
By my critique: the best movie in the series. A real return to the original show, but still has enough action to keep an adrenaline junkie going. Speaking of action, none of the stunts hint of CGI. They all look real, and they all look spectacular. The acting is top notch, and plot line is relevant in today's world, yet politically neutral enough to invite viewers of all walks of life.
85%. Great work by JJ Abrams and company.