I wish I had high tech gadgets that would allow me to break in anywhere, escape unseen, assume an alternate identity and possibly date Katie Holmes. But this all seems pretty unlikely seeing as how I’m not Tom Cruise.
Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and the Impossible Mission Force return to the big screen in “Mission: Impossible III.” In the third installment of this action series the IMF battles black market trafficker Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) for a mysterious device known only as “the rabbit’s foot.”
“M:i:III” is based around a cohesive story (which does not require a knowledge of the first two films), full of delectable action scenes and electronic trickiness which are portrayed in an engaging way without being too cliché or sensational. Watching the intense action scenes and smooth, covert getaways are enough to make anyone want to abandon their current occupation and adopt a secret life as part of the IMF.
On the verge of marriage with his girlfriend Julia (Michelle Monaghan), Ethan is called back into action when an agent goes missing in Berlin while investigating Owen Davian. Ethan ignores the warnings from his partner Luther Strickell (Ving Rhames) and accepts the mission to find Lindsey Ferris (Keri Russell), an IMF agent who Ethan had formerly branded as his best trainee. But in the process Ethan’s personal life becomes entangled with the mission when Davian’s henchmen kidnap Julia and threaten to kill her if they aren’t provided with the whereabouts of the rabbit’s foot.
Simply put, the action of “M:i:III” is fun to watch. Packing more than just excessive explosions and bullet-ridden shoot-outs, the film depicts the high tech antics creatively – like the IMF’s undetected infiltration of the Vatican in Rome during which we get to see Ethan print and slip into a Davian facial mask.
As usual, Hoffman delivers a great performance as the cool and collected Davian who, even when captured, immediately promises to make Ethan suffer in the end.
Also impressive is the film’s ocean-expressway action scene which makes that of “Bad Boys 2” seem tame.
The action is not only eye-catching, but often unpredictable and appropriately interwoven with Ethan’s love life. Fortunately, the cheesiness of the romantic story is offset by the shoot-outs and skyscraper stunts. The cast trained for months and Russell said in a phone interview that the hardest stunt to perform was the training segments, having to learn to assemble machine guns while blindfolded especially.
“Mission: Impossible III” is proof that Tom Cruise should do more base-jumping in movies and less insane couch jumping on Oprah.
