Not exactly bowled over - All it needed was Jennifer Garner and I could swear I was watching an episode of Alias

Rating: 5/10 (3 May 2006)

Now I like a good blockbuster like any other person and awaited MI-3 with great anticipation. Having seen the film though I came away feeling pretty under whelmed by the whole thing.
My main issue was that MI-3 was just a big screen version of Alias, JJ Abrams (the director's) other noted spy drama. Basically the plot can be condensed as follows. Ethan has personal life, Ethan hides professional life, Ethan gets drawn back into professional life, Ethan steals baddies toy, baddies kidnap someone close to Ethan to get toy back, Ethan has to get that person back. If you substitute 'Ethan' with 'Sydney Bristow' you'll see that this is a typical Alias story.
The action scenes were well executed but nothing to improve on the first two movies. They seemed to have upped the ante when it comes to guns. I can't remember Ethan using them that much in previous outings.
As always, no Mission Impossible movie is complete without Ethan jumping of a tall building, however whilst the other two movies had explosive finales, (Euro tunnel train helicopter chase in the first and high speed bike duelling in the second) the third was truly a damp squib.
In summary, The Mission Impossible movies have been simply reduced to an elaborate series of (well executed and directed) set-pieces and little else. I don't think it's unfair to say that this franchise is hardly getting better with each film and has probably had it's day.
Maybe they need to do a bond or batman with it and reset the whole thing to year 0.