Improvement on the second movie

Rating: 5/10 (8 January 2007)

The first Mission Impossible-movie with Tom Cruise was a pleasant surprise for me when i first saw it. The mood of the original series was decently preserved while it was still a modern movie. The second movie directed by John Woo was in my opinion a complete disaster. Woo is one of my favorite action directors normally, but he failed miserably there. The action scenes were awful, the story pathetic and the whole movie felt like anything but Mission Impossible.
So, brand new start with installment number three. Or at least that was what i hoped for, something more along the lines of the first movie. And was it? Well, both yes and no. The emphasis is still much on action scenes, but at least it's not as overstated and pathetically choreographed as in Mission Impossible 2. The story is somewhat better better in the third movie, and the action scenes are much improved. Also the balance between smartness and action is better with at least a little more agent-style scenes. So while it was an improvement there was still much i didn't like.
First of all, the idea in Mission Impossible was always solving things with your brain, not with guns. There is too much focus on the guns in this movie. I had also expected a lot more from Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the bad guy, he's definitely one of my favorite actors. But his part here doesn't really let him come into his own, although he is by far the best actor in this movie. Tom Cruise is what he is and he works OK without being brilliant, much like always. Another thing that bothered me is the plot-holes that keep appearing. Without saying too much it soon becomes impossible to trust anyone and everyone seems to get a hold of secret information very easily. That is always something i feel is very annoying, when the very organization the hero works for seems to be structured by and for imbeciles.
All in all this is a great improvement on the second installment, but that doesn't make this a great movie. I had hoped it would be more along the lines of the first film but the action is still the main thing here. Also the "smart" parts that are more Mission Impossible-like are not very good here. Many of them are just too unbelievable, others downright silly. It's a pretty entertaining ride while it lasts, but it leaves a pretty dull impression when the show's over. I give it a 5/10.