I had a lot of problems with this movie...

Rating: 4/10 (13 November 2006)

I enjoyed the first two movies in this series, the first one most of all. That being said, this entry was quite a letdown. I wasn't expecting much, just a good action movie and it is that however, it had some problems that I just couldn't get past; I know his performance was lauded on all sides and there was much talk that he stole the movie but I just couldn't accept Mr. Hoffman as a villain, I found him totally unbelievable and over the top. In the final fight scene it looked to me as if Cruise was fighting the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
In that same vein I couldn't buy the Ethan Hunt character as a family man, the scenes with his fiancé/wife seemed forced and false. I won't even go into the creep factor, that the actress playing his wife is a dead wringer for Katie Holmes.
And while I know it's all make believe when a movie causes me to say "oh come on! while watching it that's not a good thing. This movie elicited that response not once but numerous times. Among the absurd scenes that rated an "oh come on" were the following; The opening scene where you're led to believe his wife is about to die then later in the movie the cheap cop-out they use to resolve the scene.
Cruise and Hoffman are in a jet, at altitude, going 400+ miles an hour and Cruise OPENS the cargo hatch and suspends Hoffman over it. OK, it's a movie but who didn't realize that Cruise, Hoffman, and everyone else in that aircraft would have been sucked out through that hatch from rapid de-compression. Just an aside; the in flight shot of the aircraft showed a Falcon Jet, when they landed in the US it had transformed into a Boeing 727, OK most people probably wouldn't notice that but still...
Cruise spends three seconds showing his wife how to operate a handgun, in a very high stress situation, and suddenly she's Annie Oakley! She drops not one but two bad guys just like that.
The scene on the bridge in which Hoffman's character is rescued, lots of problems with that one but the main ones were; who in the world would be able to mount an operation like that in the US on such short notice, or on any amount of notice. A missile firing drone? A helicopter? and absolutely no law enforcement response as all, none. If they were near Washington DC or Virginia I can't help feeling the aircraft would have attracted some attention from someone, say the military? Also, Cruise shoots down the drone with no problems at all once he had the machine gun but seconds later he can't seem to hit the helicopter (a much bigger target) and then just seems to give up, lowers the gun and watches Hoffmans character escape, all while the helicopter was still well within range.
The final scene with his wife and co-workers all bonding, please, it was totally out of character with the rest of the movie, I felt like I'd jumped to an old episode of the Waltons.
Over all I just didn't buy most of the characters or the plot, the villain was too over to top and unbelievable, the story line was absurd, the stunts, while entertaining to watch did nothing to strengthen the story and were too spectacular, they actually took away from the viewers ability to accept what they were watching, I watched them thinking they were there just so they could say forget about the lame ass story, wasn't that stunt cool? It wasn't a horrible movie, it just wasn't a very good movie either.
It left me yearning for the next installment in the Bourne series.