Customer Reviews

Mission: Impossible III

5 star:		(82)
4 star:		(97)
3 star:		(60)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

I heard nothing but good things about this movie, so I rented it the first day it was available recently.....and I wasn't disappointed. Oh, it does have a bit too much action and a few politically-correct annoyances but neither are much and overall the movie is a lot of fun to watch.

The action scenes are not only interesting; they're spectacular at times. Overall, the photography is slick. It's a good visual movie. Not only the cinematography, but the director did a nice job with many of these shots. The version doesn't have all the gimmicks the first Misssion Impossible film, but it certainly has the best action scenes. The action is improbable as Cruise's "Ethan Hunt" would have to be Superman to perform the stunts and acrobatics he does here. (I would never claim this movie is credible, or even "intelligent" - just escapist fun.)

Just put your brains on hold, and go along for the wild ride.

Not very often do the studios come up with a 3rd installment of a film that surpasses it's predecessors. I felt that this was one of those rare cases. I was one of the minority who was not blown away by the first MI. I was even more dissappointed by the second MI. The second one was nothing but a "Cruise love-in". God forbid that they shot a single second of footage that didn't include Tom.
With these memories, I avoided this 3rd MI film. Well, today I had the day off and it was on Pay channels. I sat down and was prepared to be underwhelmed. I was pleasantly surprised. The film again relies heavily on Cruise. But, this time the story is greatly improved by the presence of Lawrence Fishburne and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Back again is the tremendous Ving Rhames. All these characters make for a compelling story. There is also the presence of the nifty gadgets and urgency we expect from MI films.
Overall I found the entire film to be much more enjoyable than the previous MI's and would recommend it to anyone.

MOVIE: While Summer isn't officially here, it is here in terms of movies. Mission Impossible 3 kicks off the summer movie season with a bang with an interesting and entertaining installment in the money-making franchise. Tom Cruise reprises his Ethan Hunt role and J.J. Abrams takes the director's chair. What makes the Mission Impossible franchise so interesting is the constant change of directors. If you look at other franchises like Lethal Weapon, Pink Panther, Indiana Jones, etc, the directors usually stay on board for the sequels. Even with the James Bond franchise you have directors usually doing several Bond films in a row. Mission Impossible was helmed by Brian De Palma and was all espionage with light action. Action maestro John Woo took the second one and made an explosive and entertaining action sequel even if it was a little over cooked. J.J. Abrams makes his feature film directorial debut with Mission Impossible 3, which is a little bit of espionage and a little bit of action. For those who don't know Abrams, he started out writing films like Armageddon and Regarding Henry. He then broke into the television scene with Alias, a pretty popular show. He became very well known recently for his latest show. Abrams is the creator of LOST, one of my favorite shows. So, I was excited to see his first movie. M:I-3 has Ethan Hunt trying to settle down and start a normal life, but he is thrown back into his old job when an arms dealer played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman wants him to track down the Rabbit's Foot. The Rabbit's Foot is some kind of weapon of mass destruction, and if Hunt doesn't retrieve it in 48 hours his fiance will be killed. What follows are explosive action sequences that sing the right tune to satisfy all of our action appetites. The movie is good, but I couldn't help feeling like something was lacking. I tried to pinpoint it, and the only thing that I could come up with was that it lacked style. Sure it had LOST written all over it. The tight close ups, starting the film by showing the ending and then rewinding back to the beginning, getting Michael Giacchino to compose an almost identical score to LOST, even re-creating a scene from LOST at the end, but still the movie didn't feel like it had an overall style. The reason why I liked M:I-2 was that it had John Woo style. The slow motion build up, the doves, and of course Hans Zimmer's amazing music. I'm just saying that Mission Impossible 3 is good, but it's not a definative action movie that stands out from the rest, let's see how Abrams develops his techniques with future projects now that he's broken into the movie scene.

ACTING: Phillip Seymour Hoffman steals the show as the incredibly self centered and hot tempered Owen Davian. You can tell he had lots of fun with the role. Tom Cruise does what he does perfectly and basically owns the character. The supporting effort by Ving Rhames and the rest of the gang are not anything spectacular. It's really all about Hoffman and Cruise.

BOTTOM LINE: M:I-3 delivers the goods, but it doesn't step above anything we've seen before. The bridge fight and helicopter chase were the only scenes in the movie that really felt original, everything else felt like it has been done many times before. It's entertaining, it's fun, and you'll enjoy it. It was great to see Hoffman and Cruise really work off each other. Abrams does a great job directing, but he really didn't make it his own in my opinion.

The reason for the success of MI I and MI II, for this viewer, was the sophisticated, scientific devices and plans used to manipulate evil by good. It was always a pleasure to watch the superior minds win. But somehow MI III seems far more interested in pyrotechniques and mass explosions and derring-do than for smart ideas and for that reason it seems less successful - but then that may be the result of watching it on the home television instead of the vast spaces of a theatrical screen.

The story is negligibly the same as usual: impossible villain is superceded finally by Ethan Hunt. The role still fits Tom Cruise well, if a bit repetitious, but the strong point of this third installment is the supporting cast. We have the pleasure of Philip Seymour Hoffman's acting gifts as the arch villain, and the added pleasure of fine actors like Billy Crudup, Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Laurence Fishburne and the beauty of Michelle Monaghan, Keri Russell, and Maggie Q. And when they are not all covered by fire and broken glass and whirling helicopters and collapsing bridges etc they do make us notice them.

Not a movie for those who prefer intelligent scripts, but for an evening's diversion it is entertaining, Grady Harp, October 06

"Mission Impossible III" is a definitive summer popcorn movie. It's got amazing special effects, outlandish stunts, handsome heroes and gorgeous heroines, and a plot that is as thin as tissue paper. All in all, a perfect afternoon's escape from the summer heat.

If you are looking for a complex plot out of a Le Carre novel, you'll be disappointed in this movie, but then you knew that, didn't you? Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) tries to save the planet and his wife (Michelle Monaghan, from "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," a much wittier film) from the evil Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman, cashing in on his best actor Oscar from "Truman"). Davian is some kind of evil gun runner who sells weapons of mass destruction to Bad Guys, and he and Hunt are fighting over the Rabbit's Foot, an undescribed weapon with unimaginable destructive power that also conveniently fits into a small briefcase. Alfred Hitchcock would call this the "MacGuffin."

This "plot" is an excuse to string together some incredibly clever and outlandish "ops" for the Mission Impossible Team. From an early scene where Hunt and his team rescue a captured MI member to a kidnapping in the Vatican to some highwire escapades in Shanghai, Hunt and his gang offer visual thrills galore.

Leave your disbelief at the door, don't try to figure out the physics or the logic, and just have a good time watching attractive people do unimaginably spectacular things. (And try to forget that Tom Cruise is, you know, insane.)

***Warning the first paragraph might contain some spoilers***


Ethan Hawke (Tom Cruise) stands at the crossroads in "Mission : Impossible 3". He's left field work but gets pulled back in when Lindsay (Kerri Russell) one of his former students is captured by arms dealer Owen Davian (a deliciously nasty Phillip Seymour Hoffman). It seems that Lindsay discovered that there may be a mole helping Davian within IMF. Now Hawke once again finds himself in the field trying to bring down Davian, discover who the mole might be and protect his fiancée Michelle Monaghan) from torture and death.

Regardless of the fall out from all of Tom Cruise's issues and antics J. J. Abrams'("Lost", "Alias" and writer of the film "Regarding Henry", writer/director of the forthcoming "Star Trek XI" prequel) crafts a spy thriller almost worthy of Hitchcock with its use of the McGuffin (the "Rabbit's Foot" a dangerous weapon of war that Davian plans on selling to North Korea) and a number of marvelous set pieces that would make Brian De Palma and John Woo proud. Interestingly the third film in the series combines elements of the first two films with Hawke's search for the mole within IMF and the scenic stylish almost surreal action pieces created for the film.

We get almost as much variety for this release as you get donuts in a donut shop. The single disc edition features a limited number of features including director Abrams and star Cruise in a commentary track. Abrams discusses everything from his McGuffin (which he considers something of a joke) to Cruise's stunts during the action sequences. It's a solid commentary track.

The single disc edition also includes "The Making of the Mission" featurette, deleted scenes, and the indulgent BAFTA "Excellent in Film" montage allowing us to see why Cruise deserved to be patted on the back as well as a selection of trailers.

The two disc edition includes everything the single disc edition has plus "Inside the IMF" and "Mission Action: Inside the Action Unit" that run nearly 40 minutes. "Visualizing the Mission", "Mission Metamorphosis" and "Scoring the Mission" give insight of the production of the film from pre-production through post-production.

The 5 part "Launching the Mission" provides an excellent overview on the production of the film. "Moviefone Unscripted: Cruise/Abrams" features the two discussing the movie from an internet "event" while "Generation: Cruise" really is nothing more than an indulgent ego stroking montage from the MTV Movie Awards. Things are rounded up with trailers and TV spots for the film. We also get four Easter Eggs that are pretty easy to find on disc two.

Paramount does a nice sent off for the swan song mission of Cruise and the studio together. Although the business and quality of the film was overshadowed by Cruise's idiotic behavior "Mission: Impossible III" overcomes these obstacles with an enjoyable thriller. Hoffman is top notch and the return of Ving Rhames as Luther is always welcome. Perhaps Paramount can built a fourth franchise film around Rhames and bring in another actor to replace Cruise. Either way Abrams crafts an enjoyable adventure for fans and reinvigorates the slumping series by returning to a style that is reminiscent of De Palma's first film on steroids.

It must have been very gratifying for JJ Abrams to make this movie because he always said he conceived of Alias when he was working on Felicity and he thought: "what if Felicity [played by Keri Russell] was a CIA agent?" He finally got to answer that question in this movie. I thought Abrams did a great job with Alias (and also with Lost) so I was expecting this to be the best installment of the Mission Impossible movie series to date and better than his show, Alias. However, while this was not one of those movies that make you think: "that's two hours of my life that I'll never get back," it played less like an installment of Mission Impossible and more like a long of episode of Alias. It would have made a really good episode of Alias, but it didn't feel like Mission Impossible or the Mission Impossible characters.

It started out the way Alias usually started out, the first scene of the movie being the near climax of the story but something that actually happens later in the sequence of events, getting you invested in finding out how everything happened to get them there. From there you go to a party scene where Greg Grunberg (who played Eric Weiss on Alias) has a cameo appearance, and everything gets really weird from there. The gadgets (such as the gun that shoots an electrical device into the brain through the nostrils) and situations (like the wall climbing scene and the jump from the warehouse) were so much like Alias (and at one point like Lost) that by the end of the movie I was expecting Ethan Hunt to rip off a face mask and reveal that he was really Sidney Bristow and his wife Julia to rip off a face mask to reveal that she was really Dr. Jack Shephard underneath. (By the way, are they about done with those face masks already?) Luther Stickell seemed less the Luther Stickell of the past and more a combo of Eric Weiss and Marcus Dixon; in fact an early scene while they were beginning an operation had Luther and Ethan talking about Ethan and Julia and the conversation went a lot like the conversations Eric Weiss and Michael Vaughn used to have about Vaughn and Sidney's relationship during their operations. Lawrence Fishburn's character seemed like a combination of Jack Bristow and Arvin Sloane, Owen Davian's character somewhat like Julian Sark, even Marshall Flinkman was represented in Benji and the "Rabbit's Foot" may as well have been some Rambaldi artifact; thank God they never defined it.

Like I said earlier this movie wasn't a waste of time, I may even buy it when it gets to the $5.50 bin in Wal-Mart. It was just too much like Alias to be satisfying as a Mission Impossible movie. Still, it's impossible to despise JJ Abrams given his sweet romantic streak, and now that I've seen this movie what I'd really like is for him to make an actual "Alias" movie starring all the old characters from that show. But JJ if you do make that movie please don't guest star Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt because watching this movie morph Mission Impossible with Alias is as confused as I care to get without alcohol being involved.

If you're like me, you love to see good guys win, bad guys get what they deserve, and have lots of things blow up. This is Mission Impossible III. Lots of explosions. Lots of plot twists. A doomed romance. Friends that die, betray and are betrayed.... and lots of techno gadgets tht never fail... hence the impossible part.

It's fun to see the comraderie of the principle characters that have absolutely no fear. They speak every language, they are fit, they have extensive knowledge of various weapons, hand-to-hand fighting techniques, and none of them fears heights, water, knives, guns, fire, poison - you name it - they are invincible.

A highly enjoyable movie-going experience to be sure, but this is one I could live without seeing again. There are some movies that intrigue so much, you don't realize until days later the holes in the plot - but this is one of the movies where you see them as they happen. Albeit James Bond-esque, this movie hinges upon everyone fulfilling their role flawlessly and not one of their high-tech gadgets ever failing. I do believe a lot more plot and script development was present in the first two installments than in this feature.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is (big shock) utterly flawless, and one of the best parts of the film. The whole take-over plot involving the Vatican was very enjoyable, but I believe many integral parts had to end up on the cutting room floor to make the movie an appropriate length. When I see movies like "The Bourne Identity" where they explain everything within the allotted time, it still has amazing explosions, tech and fighting, yet you get emotionally involved w/ the plot and characters and find everything fairly plausible, it's hard to excuse this film from its shortcomings with a straight face.

There is enough good acting, gun play and stunt moves to save it from total duldrums, but this is not big on intellectualism. Sound buffs will appreciate the attention to detail regarding the sound. While the plot is questionable, I wouldn't be surprised to see this film get nominated in the Best Sound category at next year's Oscars - every helicopter blade, handcuff link and shell casing can be heard plunking away ala Doppler effect across the theater - I haven't heard Foley sounds that good in a long time.

Tom Cruise has not lost his star appeal nor has he lost his ability to make a great action movie. This installment of the sequel took me by surprise. I've never watched "Lost," so I wasn't familiar with J.J. Abrams' most recent acclaimed work. But I had watched the TV show "Alias" on several occasions and enjoyed it. But I was unaware until "MI III" that he was associated with both "Lost" and "Alias." I hadn't taken note of his directing abilities, but I'm impressed now. "Mission Impossible III" was far better than the second movie. The addition of Philip Seymour Hoffman definitely took it up a notch. But there was just great action all around. Tom Cruise did not disappoint. If you were disappointed by the second one, like I was, then I think this movie will bring back the faith. Put all the rumors/gossip aside and sit back and enjoy a thrilling ride.

Thanks to director J.J. Abrams, "Mission: Impossible III" surpasses the missed opportunities of filmmakers Brian De Palma and John Woo by returning to the core elements of the classic TV series. In the memorable villain department, Philip Seymour Hoffman kicks it up a notch and gives IMF agent Tom Cruise a run for his money. The pace rarely lags as Abrams stages several stunt-filled setpieces while surrounding Cruise with a solid acting ensemble. Unfortunately, the film's perfunctory climax squanders a potentially exciting showdown between Cruise and Hoffman - an obvious sign of budgetary shortcuts. Despite this lapse, the third time is definitely the charm for the "Mission: Impossible" franchise.