Mission: Impossible III

In this third film of the series, Ethan Hunt has retired from the field, and is training new agents…. His sweetheart Julia (Michelle Monaghan) thinks he works for the Department of Transportation…

When one of his pupils is kidnapped by a sadistic arms dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Hunt decides to assemble his old team to retrieve her, putting in mortal danger his new love…

J.J. Abrams—in his first feature film—shot "Mission: Impossible III" with a sense of timing and suspense… We're dealing with full-flash blanks, glass breaking, explosions… And we see Hunt, in a quite interesting shot, running up a wall to enter the Vatican… Also, in the bridge sequence, he runs away from a rocket hit on one of the vehicles… It's cool because the way he's running, the look on his face, before, during and after that impact could only have been done only by an actor as good as him… In China, in an old fishing village, we see him jumping off tile rooftops, with incredible grace, precision, coordination and footwork… Then, with Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell) they jump out of a building on a cable landing on a truck…

The special effects, and visual effects are great… They all work together... The Shanghai street chase with Tom leaning out of the car at some insanely dangerous angle to shoot a gun under a truck; Also Tom, in a high-speed boat, on the Tiber River in Rome, Italy; the blowing of a nice spectacular sports car; and, of course, the helicopter chase sequence where, in pursuit, the bad-guy helicopter emerges out of a fireball…

Also, in a fantastic shot, in Shanghai, China, when the camera comes in and then goes around Tom as he's standing on top of a Shanghai roof… The camera comes over his shoulder and look down at the ground, so we'll see Tom on the top of the Shanghai building, hundreds feet in the air, and just to show and set up the jeopardy of what he's about to accomplish…

Well, I loved the director's work… He's so detail-oriented…The fun, the adventure, the creativity, never eased up…

And, please, don't miss Colleen Atwood, entering the Vatican, with a head-turner red dress

Again I'm writing about a movie genre that I like very much. This is the first from the new generation of mission impossible movies. Differently from the second one Ethan appears to be more connected an dependent on his friends and his team. In a good way. The character is more realistic and emotional, he's afraid for his wife and you can see he's emotionally disturbed in the appropriate parts, but even then his skills are more than enough to solve the problems. But it's again more realistic than the second one in this aspect too. Footage is improved and there's a nice combination of fast cars, beautiful women and nice clothes and landscapes. But in a certain way, they seem to give less importance to that than they do in 007's movies. Action is the main goal here.

Not bad at all. After the John Woo craptastic crapfest that was MI2, Lost creator JJ Abrams takes over and makes a flick that is at least as good as the first one, possibly better in some respects. Some real surprises early in the flick start things off fast, and it keeps up the pace pretty well from there on. Sure, it's mostly same-old same-old, but it was fun and action-packed. Phillip Seymour Hoffman was fine as a villain, but was really not even in the movie that much. Tom Cruise was just Tom Cruise as usual, but for two hours I was able to forget about all his offscreen stupidity. You know what this really felt like? 24: The Movie. ...which they are apparently going to make. It should end up being much like MI3, and I think that'd be just fine.

If you are craving a non-stop action movie with a decent plot and acting, go no further than MI-3. Tom Cruise reprises the role of Ethan Hunt, IMF agent extraordinaire who is attempting to leave the IMF field work to others as he takes over training of new agents. Can he stand it? Of course not! or the movie would've ended in 10 minutes!

He's engaged to marry Michelle Monaghan as his fiancée Julia. I think their chemistry was pretty good. I recently watched her in Source Code and she's a terrific actress. At an engagement party, Ethan gets a call and next thing you know, he's back in the field. He just has that itch and needs to scratch it. Cruise does a decent acting job of a guy torn between two worlds, where he wants to be just another normal guy, but his whole team is telling him that he can't have a normal life.

His team delivers, particularly Ving Rhames, who is so Mr. Cool. Also Maggie Q has a unique ability to blend in as nobody special, but be made to be very sexy when needed. Jonathan Rhyss Myers was standard. I saw him in Bend it Like Beckham, and he's OK as an actor. Laurence Fishburne delivers as a mega boss type guy who takes no crap or bs from anyone. And finally Billy Crudup as Cruise's mission chief who aids and abets Cruise outside the authority of officialdom.

The plot is pretty simple, good guys against bad guys. Phillipe S. Hoffman absolutely delivers as evil, sadistic, feelingless arms dealer Owen Davian, who sells anything to anyone for a price with no concern about anyone. Hoffman, RIP, has some tremendous scenes with Cruise, where they go toe to toe in life or death struggles. Whoa, those scenes are really intense emotionally and physically.

The action spans the globe from the US to Germany to Italy to China and back. At a little over 2 hours, the film is nicely paced. There are no real down moments where you feel the movie drags - it's non-stop. At the end, you don't really care about the Rabbit's Foot as much as you do about how it's going to go down. Just strap yourself in and enjoy this fine installment to the MI series. Enjoy.

A very good addition to the series. A great movie after the first one. MI:II is must not be considered an MI movie, but this one here builds the foundation to take the series further. We get an insight of Hunt's life. The driving force of the MI series is Hunt's dilemmas. The movie begins to get into the MI universe with showing us what Hunt is made of and why he chooses what he chooses in the next films. The actions were a plus point, very few overuse of action is encountered. The action were basic nevertheless. But still the movie gives away many of Hunt's super spy skills like lip reading and webslinging across building. Got to say, Hunt is very lucky to survive so many life and death situation.

The acting was on point, the other characters other than Hunt hadn't have any significant challenges in acting considering the calibre of them. Tom Cruise grew as an actor and it showed if his performance from first two filmshas to be considered. I wish the movie was less predictable and avoided the cliches. It's a good movie to pass your time.