Review of Mission: Impossible III (2006) by Dillinger P — 08 Apr 2014

After 2 outings, finally this franchise gets the care and attention needed to put it up there with the rest of the spy/action pictures cutting about. Everyone is on their game in this one and Cruise gives the performance of a lifetime.

MI:3 is set quite some time after the chop suey John Woo outing, Ethan is now engaged to Monaghan and is enjoying life as a teacher at the IMF rather than field operative. During their engagement party Ethan gets a call from Crudup, upon replying he finds out that one of his accredited students has been captured while on duty trying to gain intelligence on a black market pioneer Davien, played whoppingly good by Hoffman.

This starts a chain of events that leads to just about all kinds of shit hitting the fan and forcing Ethan to capture an item called The Rabbits Foot and delivering it to Davien in exchange for his wives life.

The film just gets it right, opening with a gut punch and continually playing with your mind and expectations every step of the way. The cinematography is outstanding, aside from the typical Abrhams lens flair, you feel in the moment with the film, especially during the action sequences and my oh my, are they on fire.

One scene in particular that takes place on a bridge, involving a helicopter and a drone is just relentless. The performances are rock solid, Hoffman plays Davien with subtly and great threat, a man not to be reckoned with, however doesnt need to act like a lunatic in order to scare you.

Monoghan acts wonderfully as Hunts other half, Rhames, Meyers and Maggie Q also act as sufficent support for Cruise, and Cruise just smacks it out the park. He is always commited to his roles but here he there is so much good source material and character development with him to work with that he is allowed to be more than a arse kicking machine.

Fishbourne and Crudup do what they can with what they have and even mr Simon Pegg pulls out a performance from not very much. Its big, its bold, its relentless. The espionage is back, the thrills higher, the bangs louder and it even gives you time to breathe, occassionally with some romance and comedy.

So where does it let us down? Well by the 3rd outing, the progression has become somewhat formulaic by now, Ethan hunt and his small team contribute to a mission that goes wrong, then have to make amends, a massive building has to be jumped off by Hunt and a fist fight to wrap the proceedings up.

Its almost at times as if Abhrams is allowing the parodying to commence and luckily tries to bend your expectations of it a little so its not so predictable. However the film does tread over a lot of familiar ground and also makes the process and time of the mask wearing close to impossible in the second outing, not that, that film didnt do a bad enough job of that anyway.

Fans of the series will love it, action fans will have a blast and virtually any newcomer can walk into this and not feel too lost. quality entertainment from Cruise and Co.