Mission: Impossible 3

Mission: Impossible 3

It feels a little forced, but there are some worthwhile performances here.

With this film being the third installment of the series, which has now been around for a decade, it'd be easy to assume that this is a set of films that is definitely on the decline. While the first Mission: Impossible was a relatively fun bit of Hollywood espionage, the sequel was pathetically forgettable and got lost in the shuffle of every other action flick that came out around the same time. So how does M:I-3 stack up? Well, what helps it is the absolutely stellar acting of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who takes on the role of black market runner extraordinaire Owen Davian. His incredibly understated delivery makes his character all the more sinister, easily outdoing the previous villains in these films. Likewise, Billy Crudup and Lawerence Fishburne provide solid supporting roles, and Tom Cruise is clearly having a ball playing Ethan Hunt. There are a number of very nicely done subtleties within the film, whether it be Tom Cruise getting into character of a priest (he originally was going to go into the priesthood before deciding on acting), or some styling cues from the previous films, or the fact that Tom Cruise's love interest (played by Michelle Monaghan) is made up to look an awful lot like a certain real-life counterpart. Speaking of the love story, this is really the only thing that brings down the movie. While the question of whether or not Ethan Hunt (or any agent) can have a personal/family life while serving could have been somewhat intriguing (if a bit clichéd), the way in which the story continuously reminds the audience of that is relatively irritating, as it wastes the first twenty minutes of the film and many points in between. Perhaps since the entire basis of the movie is on the impossible, they'll figure out they don't need to attempt to add a personal story to make it more realistic. Other than that, the only other major fault of the film was the hyperkinetic cinematography that goes overboard when you can't figure out the background from any individual actor. In some of the scenes it works really well in that it heightens the intensity of the action or a given scene, particularly in the exchanges between Tom Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman, but for many other scenes it's completely unnecessary and almost sickening. Other than these two glaring faults within the movie, there is a lot of fun to be had here and for that I'd consider Mission: Impossible 3 the first blockbuster of the year.

Overall Rating: 76