Mission Impossible 3 Review (Sunday Business Post)
Mission: Impossible 3
Director: JJ Abrams
Review: Jonathan McCrea
Cert: 12A
After losing two directors on what was turning into an unfortunately-named venture, Tom Cruise was forced to take a leap of faith with newcomer JJ Abrams for Mission: Impossible 3. While the creator of TV series Lost and Alias had shown his cinematic qualities on the small screen, there was a lot riding on his theatrical debut. So far the Mission: Impossible franchise has been a cash cow. Despite patchy reviews, the two staggeringly successful predecessors of the franchise have earned $997m between them. Yet there’s no denying that the past 12 months have secured Tom Cruise the dubious achievement of ‘worst press year ever’ for a motion picture star. Having endured jabs at his newfound wife and religion, the water pistol affair, ‘the Oprah episode’ and a negligence lawsuit, the Cruiser needs MI:3 to be a success to quash the swelling tide of character assassinations.
Undeterred by such pressure, Abrams convinced Cruise to delay the scheduled production and abandon the script to start from scratch. Set a few years on from the last episode, Ethan Hunt has retired from active duty and now trains new recruits for the IMF (Impossible Mission Force). When one of his star pupils gets kidnapped in the field by weapons trader Owen Davian Davian (Philip
Seymour Hoffman, Capote, Magnolia), he reluctantly agrees to help. Leaving fiancee Julia (Michelle Monaghan, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) at home, he leads an Impossible Mission to rescue his colleague from a highly secured warehouse in Berlin. When he arrives, Ethan discovers further complications and a wider plot involving members of his own organisation.
As a story it couldn’t sound less generic, but MI:3 is one of the most entertaining blockbusters to hit cinemas for quite some time. Yes, there are enough explosions to win the heart of any budding pyromaniac, but Abrams has taken time to recognise that even a lowly ‘action’ film requires more than a fistful of fireworks to be memorable.
Hunt now has a home, a girl and something to lose. He makes small talk with his fiancee’s in-laws at parties and cares about his students. Meanwhile doting fiancee Julia has to battle with her trust in him knowing that he keeps secrets from her. Wit is supplied by Ethan’s colleague Luther (Ving Rhames) and boss (Laurence Fishburne) providing comic relief. All of these elements breathe new life into the characters that seemed so stale in John Woo’s humourless cheesefest that was Mission: Impossible 2.
To be fair, Cruise may be a little overeager these days, but that doesn’t make him a bad actor. He’s just had a few too many sprints down damp alleyways dodging bullets and laserbeams. While MI:3 is hardly his Hamlet, the gripping opening scene where Ethan watches as his fiancee is terrorised by Davian reminds us why Cruise is ‘the biggest star in the world’ TM .
Oscar-winner Hoffman, normally known for playing the sensitive romantic, is predictably brilliant as Davian. Shedding all the sophistication usually afforded the criminal mastermind in these sort of films, his deadpan demeanour is chilling.
Even the score is experienced and well-balanced, with Abrams thankfully sparing us too many reprises of Lalo Schifrin’s theme tune. Whether slowly building tension or tricking the audience by turning musical cliches on their heads, it’s forgivable that Cruise likened the director to a young Alfred Hitchcock.
Everything you could want from a spy film, M:I3 is a proper white-knuckle thriller that raises the bar for Daniel Craig and the 007 crowd when Casino Royale is released later this year.
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