Mission Impossible III - Ray's Review

Allow me to get straight to the juicy part:

M:i:III gets a solid 9/10

It is easily better than the first two installments. Part I had some elements of team-work (and it had that really cool bit with the water crashing through the window and Cruise doing his awesome running - man can this guy run cool or what?), but the ending has always confused the hell outta me, I simply had no idea who did what to who by the end (and I didn't care much either), all I knew was that the very guy who gave them their missions was the bad guy (how stupid is that? It totally goes against the TV series and is one "bold move" I could do without).

Part II looked fantastic thanks to Woo, but it wasn't a good Mission Impossible film, in fact the teamwork element seemed to be a mere afterthought. The plot was secondary to the cool action scenes (which on repeat viewing I was surprised to find there aren't anywhere near enough of) and the film just felt hollow. I have a few friends who hate this film vehemently and I can understand why, but my love for Woo meant I still enjoyed it.

Part III finally gets the combination of elements right. The teamwork is brilliant, the copious action scenes are tense, well staged and exhilarating. Ethan Hunt's home life is brought into focus and he even has a bit of a "character arc" this time around. Cruise tackles the stunts and emotional scenes with an equal amount of skill and enthusiasm, and there is no denying his strong screen presence. The antagonist (played brilliantly by Philip Seymour Hoffman) is truly intimidating and ups the ante in a huge way. With a lesser actor in the role the whole film would have been diminished; it's the first decent bad guy in years and should hopefully remind people that they don't have to be tedious over-actors who lament about crap and prance around doing a whole lot of nothing.

I'm not going to go into the plot, suffice to say it is interesting and it moves like a rocket (I kept trying to find a moment to go to the toilet, but the film just never let up and I had to hold on to the end - but the agony was worth it). Most importantly the plot isn't too predictable and has a few surprises up its sleeve, which is more than you can say for most films these days. The supporting actors - while not having much in the way of character development - are all solid and play their parts with aplomb.

On the small downside, the director certainly handles everything well - particularly the story and characters - but I still think the film could have looked a little more polished and I got sick of all the dolly shots with blurry foreground elements flying past... it reminded me of what they do on TV shows to try and make things seem more chaotic and lived in, by the end I felt like pushing some of the crap out of the way so I could see what was going on behind it! Also the last scene was totally superfluous and pretty big on the cheese, but hey, after all the cool shit that came before it, it didn't bother me much.

Anyway, that's one small problem in a huge success of a film. Mission Impossible III is everything you want from a large scale Blockbuster film and will be a hard act to follow for the remaining big films this year.

9/10