Excellent! (for an action movie)

Rating: 9/10 (22 September 2006)

I get DVDs and give the ones worth seeing to my father. That's exactly what I wrote on the Post-It attached to this one: "Excellent! (for an action movie)". This is what action movies should be all about. This is what James Bond movies used to be all about. Well, to be perfectly honest, I'd rather have a really good James Bond over a really good Mission Impossible, but since they don't even do reasonably good James Bond movies any more, I'm happy to embrace the MI franchise instead.
The movie is packed with action. But it's reasonably believable. It's packed with suspense. But not in an obviously artificial, silly way as recent action movies tend to. Technical terms are relatively frequent. But the explanations are either reasonable or not needed, as opposed to the confusing mumbo-jumbo we had to get used to lately.
But the most prominent feature which actually makes this James Bond-like is the touristic quality of the movie. James Bond movies were arguably the first mainstream, widely recognizable movies which featured several exotic locations per movie for the single purpose of enhancing the movie viewers' experience. Of course, the "real" James Bond movies added an extra touch of refinement which the MI series doesn't even attempt to touch. But the reality is that the "real" James Bond movies are really, really tacky by today's standards, in an Austin Powers sort of way. Really.
So, unless the James Bond franchise owners make a serious effort to update Bond's character while also keeping his British charm (which they obviously haven't over the last decade), we'll have to settle with the MI series as "the thing". And, to be honest, that would only be marginally disappointing in the greater scheme of things, if they keep their standards at the level of MI:3.
9/10 only because I still hope for James Bond to be resurrected--10/10 otherwise.
(I rate movies per genre; one can't compare this to The Godfather, or The Lord of the Rings, or The Matrix, or Schindler's List in any reasonable fashion, in my opinion.)