Best of three May blockbusters

Rating: 8/10 (6 June 2006)

May seems to be the month studios release their best summer movies and this year MI3, X-Men and Da Vinci Code were the three biggies. Of those 3 the best is easily Mission Impossible III. In the first installment in six years, Cruise continues his role as Ethan Hunt and Ving Rhames returns as Luther Stickell but bad guy Philip Seymour Hoffman seems to dominate the entire film in spite of the fact that he's not in that many scenes.
Introduced in an unnerving sequence at the beginning of the film that is thankfully not repeated in context, Hoffman displays his incredible talent at understatement, even when he is suppose to be Cruise. Of course, Cruise does the usual running, jumping off tall buildings and is repeatedly saved by various ropes just long enough to break his fall before he hits something. Probably the best scene for pyrotechnic fans is Hoffman's escape from an armored car on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.