Enjoyable, but not great

Rating: 7/10 (18 June 2006)

Better than the 2nd, that's for sure (and not really hard) but it doesn't stand out as the "best action movie in years" and here is why (SPOILER AHEAD!!!!!)
1) These spies were the most stupid "secret agents" EVER. What were they thinking yelling each other's TRUE identities all over the place?! The agent they wanted to save in the beginning screamed "Ethan!" more than once, then Ethan followed by yelling "Declan!" at his driver, "Luther" was yelled at one point and Luther himself yelled "ETHAN" several times during their interrogation of Davian in the helicopter, which ended with Davian calling him "Ethan" while suspenseful music played - *Shock* GASP, how did he EVER find out that Ethan was Ethan when everybody was calling him that all the time? Some twist. I shudder to think of this man's ability as a man who has ears...and has no scruples to USE them. How frightening.
2) The Rabbit's foot issue: Not only did we never find out what the heck it is supposed to be or what it would do at all, but we never saw HOW the hell he got it! After they made such a big deal out of this mission to be so tough and dangerous to pull off that it would make the Langley coup (from the first mission) look like a walk in the park, this was a huge let-down. I love the action scenes going to that though, but it just wasn't enough to satisfy expectations towards a SPY movie that promised to be more "story" (therefor: suspense!!) oriented than action-paced. Mission: NOT accomplished. Sorry.
3) The "romance" between Ethan and Julia fell flat on me. It reminded me of the Holmes-Cruise one (not only because Michelle remarkably resembles Katie) but they even copied some real-life issue: How they came together remains a mystery.(And don't give me that "Lake Wanaka or whatever" that was just a place to run into each other, like bumping into a guy after leaving the bathroom in a theme park. It's not enough to build a relationship on it) It just didn't do it for me and I found their scenes utterly boring and slow. The wedding as an answer to her question "Is this real?" was a little 'wtf', that is not even possible at such a speed. No license, no mention to anyone but that priest (who was conveniently at the place at night! What, did somebody need the "last rite"?!, how wonderful for him to switch from sad to happy event in one single night, huh?!) However, this left a bitter taste in my mouth. I know it was supposed to be romantic and sweet but to me it just looked ridiculous and out of place.
4) The shot-in-the-head scene of a certain person. Now I don't know about you guys, but I always thought, that when a bullet enters a human head, it would cause some kind of wound. This person looked like just having lost consciousness (or was so bored by the toy gun "threat" that she just fell asleep in relief once the "loud sound" gave her the cue. Cheap cope-out and that in a 150 million dollar budget. *sigh*
5) The CPR scene was executed simply laughable. We are supposed to believe that this woman is a nurse? Then shouldn't she know that it's not possible to tickle a person back into life?! The "pressure" she used on his chest was that of a cat jumping in somebody's lap. I know that you can't really do REAL CPR on a person who is still alive, but if "Emergency Room" and co. can pull the pretending off believable enough, one would think that a BIG BUDGET Hollywood MOVIE would be able to do that, too. Gosh, I've seen "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" doing better CPR than this person who was sold to us as some nurse and they didn't have the budget these guys had. It would have been enough for a High School play, but as a scene here: It blew.
As an action film: it was okay and had some really nice stunt work to enjoy watching. For Cruise fans, who are mostly interested in watching him doing stunts and looking young, this is definitely worth watching. But for people who watch it for the story, it's disappointing.
The only thing that made it better than the 2nd was, that Ethan Hunt wasn't the invincible "James Bond meets The Matrix" than the John Woo crap-fest from 2000 had been, but it still remains some "Action: with no story" that the former big screen Mission Impossibles have been.