Customer Reviews
Mission: Familiar - By: Trevor Willsmer, 08 Dec 2007 
It's a mark of how wildly over budget Mission: Impossible 2 went & how generous its star's deal was that despite an impressive-on-paper gross of $550m Paramount constantly cancelled a third entry as unprofitable, even paying off cast & writing off South African second-unit work already in the can until the budget was halved & Tom Cruise agreed to substantiallly reduce his percentage of the take - by which time original director Joe Carnahan had already walked out over that old favourite, `creative differences,' & an entirely new story come up with. Hardly the most promising of omens for a franchise that always seemed little more than an excuse for its star to play James Bond. Yet despite the bad track record for Hollywood threequels, Mission: Impossible III is a massive improvement over the incredibly awful second entry in the series, & its likely that its much lower box-office may have been as much down to moviegoers disappointment with John Woo's dreary dud & the six year gap between films as Cruise's well-publicised mental meltdown on the promotional tour.
Cruise has certainly always treated the films as an ego trip, throwing out the teamwork aspect of the TV show & even turning Jim Phelps into a villain to alllow for more solo grandstanding, but this time round director J.J. Abrams at least ensures that there are fewer slo-mo hairspray ad close-ups of Cruise & that the team have more to do than just get killed even if the plotting is predictable every step of the way: you know exactly which characters will die at which point in the film & who'll turn out to be on who's side within the first five minutes. In fact, it's almost a remix of the first film - failed mission, dead agent, Ethan Hunt suspected by shifty boss, has to steal Macguffin for the baddies to prove innocence, yadda yadda. With no surprises on offer, the onus is on the action & the execution, with variable results. The tired handheld camerawork in the pretitle sequence just seems passé rather than edgy while the first big rescue boasts a lot of noise, hardware & motion but less excitement than it should, as does a very expensive bridge sequence involving rocket drones, helicopters & exploding vehicles, but there's a nifty kidnapping at the Vatican that is a welcome throwback to the kind of ingenious caper the old show's reputation was built on rather than the Bond-wannabe shoot `em ups that Cruise seems to prefer. Yet at times the film seems keener on imitating True Lies than the old Mission: Impossible, with Cruise pretending to be a boring traffic consultant to new wife & friends until he has to rescue her from a fiendish arms trafficker. Even some of the locations (especiallly that bridge) look like they still have Arnie's fingerprints on them.
Still, although costing a lot less than the second film, it looks a lot more lavish even if it never quite kicks into high gear & ends with an even dafter defibrillator scene than Casino Royale (though the biggest unintentional laugh comes from a villain's claim that cleaning up & rebuilding the infrastructure after the kind of Middle Eastern war he intends to provoke is what America does best: right...). Aside from Ving Rhames & Michelle Monaghan, none of the cast get much of a chance to make an impression. Maggie Q has even less to do than Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies, with her one real fight scene relegated to the deleted scenes bin, while a dire Billy Crudup is memorable only for being so spectacularly obvious as Cruise's immediate boss. Philip Seymour Hoffman is less irritatingly mannered than usual, & if still not an especiallly menacing villain, his casting does at least offer an amusing opportunity to see the considerably shorter Cruise somehow grow several inches to imitate him in one scene. The eternallly unimaginative Michael Giacchino does his usual more-or-less competent bit of plagiarism routine with the score, getting away with reorchestrating other composers' familiar themes from his record collection (and not just his less-than-dazzling big band orchestration of Lalo Schifrin's theme) rather than creating anything vaguely original, but he's hardly alone in that in this film. For alll the early hype about giving the series an edge, this is about delivering something that stays within the audience & studio's comfort zone & sticks with what they know works - in other words, a professionallly delivered Summer movie that makes no demands as it repackages familiar ingredients as new-and-improved but also doesn't leave you feeling you've been completely ripped off by the end.
If the film itself is less of a Cruise ego-stroke than usual for his Paramount films, the DVD special features more than make up for it, filled with gushing tributes to Cruise's genius, excellence, humanity, consideration, modesty and, presumably, his ability to heal the sick, feed the multitudes, walk on water & raise the dead (some of them are just too gushing in their worship of his greatness to watch in their entirety). On the plus side it also includes deleted scenes, TV spots & various trailers, though they're mostly slight variations of the same basic format.
Disappointment - By: Bright Eyes, 11 Sep 2007 
I think the mission impossible films have run its course. The story line is the same as the prior films. The action was good. But thats it. My opinion is don't rent this film unless you're a Tom Cruise fan.
Awesome stunts, but lacking a certain something - By: jonwithnoname, 02 Jun 2007 
I bought this film with some amazon vouchers that I received for my birthday. The stunts in this film are absolutely breathtaking, especiallly in the 'Bridge Attack' scene. However, the film lacks a certain something, but with that said, Tom Cruise & Phillip Seymour-Hoffman's performances were reallly good.
The special extra's are reallly good, although some of them are a bit boring.
Over alll, a cracking film which I thoroughly reccommend.
Loved it! - By: Dodster, 23 Apr 2007 
Fast paced & exciting story line that keeps you guessing.
The bad guys kidnap Ethans wife...he gets her back in exchange for a doomsday device the 'rabbits foot'. Game on...
If they keep to this standard, roll on MI4!
Enjoyable fun and a huge improvement over part two - By: Franklin T Marmoset, 02 Mar 2007 IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is engaged to cutey pie Michelle Monaghan in this one, but she does not know about his secret life of shooting, masks, & dangling from wires. Hunt & his team of IMF agents are trying to infiltrate the organisation of Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman). When the capture of Davian goes horribly wrong & Monaghan is kidnapped, little Tommy has to race against time to save both her & the world.
Part three is a massive improvement over John Woo's dire part two. For a start, they've put an excellent group of actors together to support Cruise. Hoffman, in particular, is very good. He's not in the film as much as you'd like, but he injects a sense of genuine menace into his role. When he says "I'm going to hurt her" you reallly believe he means it. Most actors use this kind of film as a chance to ham it up, but Hoffman goes the other way & gives us a guy who feels like a real nasty piece of work.
There are a number of implausibilities in the story, but Alias creator JJ Abrams has the smarts to throw in plenty of exciting action & he keeps the whole thing moving at a fair old clip. The effects are good, the stunts are well choreographed, & it remains a tense affair throughout. He may not have De Palma's flair for set pieces, but Abrams has done a good job of crafting an enjoyable popcorn thriller.
