Mission: Unbalanced

Rating: 5/10 (6 May 2006)

Mission: Impossible III starts out promising a great premise for the series: a deeper story with a realistic grounding. There was the first Mission: Impossible, which had a cool and slick facade, but left many feeling confused, even betrayed at the movie's treatment of Jim Phelps. Then along came John Woo's version, which stated that it would have a simpler plot with better action scenes, but the plot was so simple to the point of being non-existent. Now, TV wonderment J.J. Abrams (Alias & Lost) promised a healthy synergy of the slickness of the first part with the intensity of the second. Of which, we get both, but the MI:3's pace is so rigid in juggling these two premises that the movie seems to play out like a long television episode.
Not to say that a long episode would be a bad thing, as Mr. Abrams has created two of the best shows on TV right now, but the problem lies with the dialog and the delivery. In one moment, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his new fiancé (Michelle Monaghan) are on a rooftop as Ethan is trying explain to her that he is going somewhere, but can't explain where he is going. The actors speak so quietly for so long that the emotion of the moment is almost lost. There are moments where Mr. Abrams' style of dialog does come out, but one must wonder if the other two writers actually hindered his dialog.
The plot of the movie revolves around Ethan Hunt's secret that he keeps from his fiancé about his true job working for the IMF and whether or not an agent can actually have a normal life. Said theory is put to the test when Ethan is called for a mission to retrieve an agent that has been captured, who was Ethan's first trainee that he personally graduated. A mishap with her during the mission causes Ethan to want to dig deeper into the nature of her mission which led to her capture.
Enter our henchman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who does make for the best villain of the series (much like Blowfeld to James Bond) and Mr. Hoffman is an excellent actor, but when pitted against Tom Cruise on the screen, he does not come across as being threatening as much as he does a pawn in a much greater scheme (of which the movie begins starts to take more clever turns). Overall, the goal of the villains is never established except to come across that they are villains.
But audience don't go to Mission: Impossible for a coherent story or a balanced story during the summer, they go for spectacular action sequences. After all, this is the movie that is kicking off the summer season of blockbusters. This is where J.J. Abrams displays his talents as a director. This movie has many great espionage moments, the break into the Vatican is one of the best choreographed thriller scenes in recent years as well as the missile attack on the bridge scene one of the best action scenes of the decade. The action scenes are where this movie truly shines and it's a good thing there is an abundance of them in this film because when the film comes to meet one of it's more emotional scenes, it's such a jerky transition that the audience can feel like they're experiencing first hand what a manic-depressive goes through.
Still, the Mission: Impossible movie franchise has yet to find it's feet and by the third part of the series, it can seem a bit exhausting as the audience waits and compares the style. After three films and nearly $350 million spent on all three, you'd think it would be time that the series found a reliable foundation to fall back on to the way that James Bond or Indiana Jones has. However, the movie churns along like a giant tree without any roots: all display and grandioso, nothing grounding it.