Mission Impossible III Movie Review
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Mission: Impossible III
Tom Cruise was very canny when he picked the Mission: Impossible television series as the foundation for his star vehicle franchise in the mid 90s. An iconic series with cross-generational appeal, it allows Cruise to be the star, be entangled in plot machinations, and engage in action heroics to save the day. In 1996, the first instalment, directed by Brian De Palma, set opening weekend box office records and launched a new franchise for Cruise and Paramount to quickly exploit over the next few years. However, they did not. It was another four years for the sequel; this time directed by Hong Kong action maestro John Woo. Another big box office success, which again was not followed up quickly. Now, after six years, numerous false starts, a revolving door roster of directors and writers, a new missus and baby, and a couch-jumping episode, Cruise has returned to save the world in the third Mission: Impossible instalment.
Never really commented upon in the first two Mission: Impossible films are the heavy romantic subplots, the first involving the coveting of Jim Phelps wife and the second involving the coveting of a rogue agent’s girlfriend. This time, IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) has a woman of his own, Julia (Michelle Monaghan, recently seen illuminating the screen in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang), and he is all set to make her an honest woman. No longer in the field, Hunt is a trainer for IMF, when he is lured back for a special mission to rescue one of his former pupils, Lindsey (Keri Russell). This is a Mission: Impossible film, so not only do things go awry, they become positively convoluted.
At the centre of Mission: Impossible III’s plot is Owen Davian (recent Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman), an evil businessman who trades arms with undesirable countries and has a penchant for inserting small explosive devices into the heads of his victims. Helping Cruise in a daring mission to kidnap Davian, is an IMF team consisting of Luther Strickell (Ving Rhames, who is so far the only character/actor to appear in all three Mission: Impossible films), Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, last seen in (Match Point), and Zhen (Maggie Q). Not surprisingly, they do not add a lot to the film and merely add multicultural colour to the background. More sparks fly between IMF director, Brassel (Laurence Fishburne), and Cruise’s former controller, Musgrave (Billy Crudup).
Mission: Impossible III is a mixed bag: not as good as the first instalment, but better than the second. When Brian De Palma lit the fuse on the first film, it was an exciting action blockbuster that joined James Cameron’s True Lies as a rare film exploiting the spy genre after a lengthy absence of James Bond films. Now, the Bond franchise is well and truly revived, there is a Jason Bourne franchise of spy films, along with Mr and Mrs Smith. With the spy market crowded with so many operatives, Mission: Impossible III and Tom Cruise fail to bring anything exceptional to the mix. Any fan of Alias will tell you that much of this film is derivative of this popular television series, which is not too surprising considering the director of Mission: Impossible III, J.J. Abrams, is the creator of Alias. It is also derivative of many other action films, particularly True Lies, which also deals with a spy who keeps his job a secret from his wife, until she is caught up in the plot. There is even an action sequence in Mission: Impossible III set on a long bridge that bears more than a passing resemblance to the (better) sequence in True Lies.
However, Mission: Impossible III is far from being a bad film. Even more so than the first two Mission: Impossible films, this instalment should be called Mission: Gone Wrong, as there is not much that goes in Hunt’s favour. Much of the film’s excitement and drama is not generated from the precision execution of outrageous plans, but from Hunt’s desperate attempts to stop his derailed mission from crashing into total disarray. Using one of Abrams’ favourite plot devices, the flashback narrative structure, the film begins with Hunt’s most impossible mission: how to stop the bad guy, who is holding a gun to the head of the woman you love, from pulling the trigger when Hunt is strapped into a chair.(source)
posted by Evil @ 7:36 AM,
