Best of the three

Rating: 7/10 (14 May 2006)

I can't remember any film in recent history that has had more people 'attached' to a project than Mission Impossible III. Going back as far as 2004, there have been directors (Joe Carnahan and David Fincher) actors (Kenneth Branagh, Ricky Gervais) and actresses (Carrie Ann Moss, Thandie Newton and Scarlett Johansson) that were all slated to be involved with the project that had to pull out due to either creative differences (good-bye Caranahan) or due to scheduling conflicts as the films production continued to be pushed back what seemed like an eternity.
The only things that remained certain was that the movie was going to eventually get made and that couch-jumping Tom Cruise would again reprise his role of IMF agent, Ethan Hunt for the third time.
This time 'round, director J.J. Abrams (no, not the same JJ from Good Times) was behind the camera taking over the reins of a franchise that saw two big name helmers, Brian De Palma and John Woo, bring their vision to the screen in the past 10 years.
J.J.'s theatrical directing experience sat at an overall count of zero. Abrams had impressed Cruise with his creation and direction of the television shows Alias and Lost, but the difference between a one-hour pilot and a $150 million dollar budgeted event film is night and day no matter how you cut it, so Abrams was a little over his head.
But you wouldn't know it.
Abrams works the camera like a seasoned pro and stages the action sequences as good as Michael Bay (I could write, 'as bad as Michael Bay', but I think you get my point). When the show gets a-rockin', Abrams keeps a good pace and by the end of the film, his direction outshines that of the series predecessors.
Before I get too far ahead of myself, let's get back to the basics. Mission Impossible III has Ethan Hunt going up against his most diabolical villain to date, Owen Davien played fiendishly by Oscar Winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Davien is in search of a weapon known as the 'Rabbit's Foot' and uses Hunt's unsuspecting wife, Julia (Michelle Monaghan) as leverage to get Ethan to acquire the Rabbit's Foot for his malicious intentions.
In order to pull off the impossible, Ethan assembles his team which again includes Luthur, played a third time by Ving Rhames. Together, the team must simply evade authorities, fight against superior firepower, jump from building to building and basically do a bunch of stunts that would have Superman himself saying 'Too dangerous'.
And while they dodge bullets, planes and rockets (Oh My!), there are IMF brass that are either for or against the operation which leaves us wondering who is pulling the strings and what double cross will come on the heels of the double cross that just occurred.
Mission Impossible III does all the summer blockbuster things right. It blows things up. It has an unequivocal movie star in the lead, and it has a villain that is downright one of the best since Sean Connery was a British Secret Agent. But maybe most amazingly is that MI:III has us forget the Cruise that we have seen on every tabloid cover, every entertainment news program and every website blog since War of the Worlds premiered a year ago. By beginning the film with a high tension moment between Davien and Hunt, we immediately are engrossed in both the ruthlessness of the baddie and the plight of the victims that we immediately leave our preconceived notions at the lobby doors.
Then, over the next two hours, we get suckered into following along the characters with great interest as our eardrums are attacked by surround sound explosions.
There are two things that would have taken MI:III into the annals of incredible action flick instead of just a very good one. First, they could have rooted the action sequences more in the realm of reality. Like the first two installments, Ethan is a one man wrecking crew that can jump from building to building and shoot people while sliding off high rise window tops. Couple this with the trademark masking and impersonating of characters which comes across like a bad Halloween joke and you get more James Bond than you do Die Hard.
The second complaint is more personal. It is that Hoffman didn't get more screen time. As Davien, Hoffman gives a performance that was as fun to watch as Travolta was in Face/Off. He is cut throat and believable without a likable bone in his body. His confidence in his schemes are his strengths and part of me actually wanted him to win (or at least survive so that we can see him again in MI:IV).
Mission Impossible III has countless subplots that have all been done before. There is the unsuspecting new wife who learns of her husbands real identify only after being sucked into the plans of the evil geniuses (True Lies). There are the bosses at IMF that fight amongst each other never revealing until the last moment which one is actually on the side of our hero (just about every action film since 1980) and there is an agent that is kidnapped and requires her mentor to come to the rescue. But for all the familiarity, there is still fun to be had, and rarely does a third film ever make you not turn your nose up at option of a fourth.
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