Overall Rating
  Awesome: 20.59%
Worth A Look: 41.91%
Average: 16.91%
Pretty Bad: 15.44%
Total Crap: 5.15%
12 reviews, 64 user ratings
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| Mission: Impossible 3 |
by Dawn Taylor
"A tedious ode to Tom Cruise's ego, with precious little plot."
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Perhaps it's unrealistic to expect the characters in big, loud action films to act like anything resembling real human beings. But when an entire motion picture hinges on the main character's relationship with his fiancee, one hopes that said relationship would make even the teeniest, tiniest bit of sense.Since the last "Mission Impossible" movie, the franchise's main character, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF), has met and wooed a nurse named Julia (Michelle "I'm not Liv Tyler" Monaghan) who thinks he's some kind of traffic safety engineer. We're supposed to find this both charming and believable, that a super-secret agent who's constantly getting himself and those around him into mortal danger would blithely become engaged to a woman and then lie to her about, well, his entire identity. Much like Renee Zellweger's doormat wife who was had at hello by the arrogant, egocentric Jerry Maguire, just the fact that he's Tom Cruise is supposed to be enough to make him lovable. (Note: It's not.)
But then, nothing in this film is plausible, from the unexplained McGuffin that Hunt is seeking to the magical spy gizmo that can create a perfect latex mask of bad guy Phillip Seymour Hoffman in 20 seconds – and which, interestingly, can add 40 pounds to Cruise's frame once he slips the mask over his head. It's all a bunch of flashy, expensive hooey, with no substance whatsoever and precious little plot.
There are moments that make one yearn for the film that this might have been, most of them coming from the criminally underutilized Hoffman. When captured, albeit briefly, by Hunt, Hoffman's chilling take on the boilerplate "I will avenge myself by killing your whole family" speech is breathtakingly fresh, a reminder as to why he's one of only a handful of actors who can make David Mamet's words sound natural. Later, when Hunt puts on that latex Hoffman mask, we get a few short seconds of Hoffman behaving like a disguised Cruise – a bit that, were it extended, could have become a legendary film moment had Cruise's ego allowed for mockery at his expense.
But Cruise's ego is a large part of the problem with the entire "Mission: Impossible" franchise, which is based on a TV show that was, some may recall, about a team of agents doing exceedingly clever things to bamboozle crooks into implicating themselves, then vanishing back into anonymity without leaving a trace of their presence. In the "M:I" movies, though, it's the Tom Cruise show all the way, with other IMF agents barely registering next to the superhumanly strong, nigh invincible Hunt. What's missing is any of the original's cleverness, as well as any reason why we should care about the characters on the screen, who have all the complexity of sock puppets.
This film will make a lot of money, and many people will no doubt love the ear-shattering explosions, helicopter crashes, and high-tech stunts, despite the fact that director J.J. Abrams isn't particularly good at directing such things.But for thinking audiences, there's a tedious repetition to the incessant rat-a-tat-tat of a mindless film like this one, and people who require some intelligence from the films they pay money to see will leave the theater mentally fatigued.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=14510&reviewer=413
originally posted: 05/10/06 11:28:00
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USA
05-May-2006 (PG-13)
DVD: 30-Oct-2006
UK
05-May-2006
Australia
04-May-2006
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