Mission Impossible 3 : Tom Cruise is back with the best installment yet

The world is at risk, and Ethan Hunt has been called back into action to deal with a situation that only he can resolve. Resigned to finding life after his position with Impossible Mission Forces (IMF), he has become a teacher/trainer rather than a mission specialist. This has afforded him the opportunity to further a relationship with the new woman in his life, and it seems he is finally able to be happy. The film opens with an engagement party, and a seemingly perfect rapport between Hunt, his new fiancé, and her friends. When the phone rings, Hunt answers it with the innocence that has become his new life, only to find that he is being called back in for a meeting with his handler. It seems that one of his students, the first one he recommended for field duty, has been captured while on assignment. Normally the IMF would disavow knowledge of a lost agent, but in this instance, they think that retrieving her could lead to an influx of information on her target. That target is a ruthless arms dealer who has been sought by the current administration for years, and now there may be a chance to bring him down. Though Hunt doesn't want back into the fray, he cares enough about his trainee to go in after her. With a pre-assembled team of agents the movie kicks into gear, and Hunt is off to rescue the missing agent.

Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt, and Ving Rhames returns as the computer expert of his team. Beyond that, all of the other characters are new to the story, and that includes the people in charge as well as Hunt's girlfriend. Though Thandie Newton was pretty good in MI:2, I guess that in order to make this story work, they needed to have Hunt with a new love interest. The trick here, was that his fiancé knows nothing about his work as an agent, believing that he works for the transportation agency as a man who studies traffic patterns. Not the more exciting of jobs, but when he explains it to her friends, it actually does sound pretty interesting. The innocence of her character will be taken advantage of later on in the story, and I guess it works for a good sub-plot, but I don't think it was necessarily needed for this one. The good thing about it though, is that they cast someone subtle for the part, so when she is in the same room as the bad guys and Hunt, it plays up to the main story even better. In addition, I was happy to find Ving Rhames getting more than just his normal back-room computer programmer role, and instead gets more focus on him this time around. For one of the other parts, Laurence Fishburne was even brought in as a new director of IMF functions. He was a good choice for the part, because he is definitely an actor that brings along authority to the screen.

Despite all of the good casting on the "good-guys" side of things, the best choice for this film was that of the man Hunt is searching for. Philip Seymour Hoffman, who most recently made his mark in the film Capote steps in as the perfect actor for this role. The way he delivers his lines, and the believability of him as an actor helps to create a villain that is someone you do not want to mess with. In fact, I would say he was one of the most dramatic villains that I have seen in a long time in movies. He brings an aura with him that sends a shiver down your spin, and when he is issuing threats, you know that it is something that you should both pay attention to, and heed with everything you have to offer. With Hoffman on one side, and Hunt doing everything in his power to stop him, the film is set up to focus more of its energy on the acting side of things than the first two films of the series tried to do. This is exactly what they needed to do with the film, because it created an atmosphere where all of the action would serve as a huge payoff to the story, and would make more sense to everything else going on. I really think that this was the best way to go with a story that most people would assume had nothing else going for it other than the action element.

Bringing in J.J. Abrams to Direct Mission Impossible III was a really good idea, because he offered something new to the franchise. As Tom Cruise put it in interviews, he was interested in seeing the vision that Abrams had for Mission Impossible. He brings with him a lot of the ideas that made Alias such an interesting television show, and if you have seen the show, you might recognize a lot of the back-music that is associated with a lot of the major scenes in MI:3. Beyond the acting, and the intrigue, and the main storyline of the movie, there is of course the intense action sequences that are often associated with these type of films. I think that indeed they did a great job of weaving intense action, innovative sequences, and a lot of tensely filled scenes to make this movie work really well. The first of such could have been something taken straight out of the television show, and if you were a true fan of that show, you are really going to get a kick out of how they pull off that "impossible mission" of the film in Vatican City. The first major blockbuster for the Summer season of 2006, I think that this is one that doesn't let its audience down, and offers the action as well as the love story of trust for those who look for storylines more like that. MI:III is a film that I can easily recommend, and one that I would enjoy seeing a second time.


Mission: Impossible

Mission: Impossible II