Super agent and all around swell guy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has given up field work with the Impossible Mission Force in favor of instructing, and lying to his fiancée, Julia (Michelle Monaghan)—but she doesn’t have enough personality to talk about, so lets forget about her. When cute-as-a-bug agent Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell) is captured by evil weapons dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Ethan overacts for a bit, then joins team members Luther (Ving Rhames), Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and Zhen (Maggie Q) in a ridiculous planned rescue operation that, thankfully, even his boss (Laurence Fishburne) thinks is stupid. More overacting helps Ethan decide to save the day by going on an unauthorized mission to get the arms dealer. Ah, but might his attempt be thwarted by a traitor in the ranks? If you don’t know the answer to that, you haven’t seen the previous films.
Tom Cruise rapes the television series Mission Impossible for the third time, but for this session he has director J.J. Abrams (TV shows: Felicity, Alias, Lost) to help hold it down. The two manage to craft a silly, slow, and pompous action thriller, that is seldom exciting and never emotionally compelling. There’s plenty of bullets, helicopter gun battles, and falls from high places, and not for a minute is it satisfying on any level. Seldom has a popcorn movie been so drab.
Cruise returns as overly emotional IMF agent, Ethan Hunt, displaying all the acting ability he’s become known for. Have you seen Eye’s Wide Shut? Yeah, that’s what you’ll have to suffer through. With a clever script that plays to a star’s strengths, an action film can get away with poor acting (think of almost anything with Arnold Schwarzenegger). Let the star show a bit of charm, keep things fast and light, add in a few wow!-inducing set pieces, and you have at least middling entertainment. But MI3 takes itself very seriously. You can almost hear Abrams shouting, “This is Theater! Act, damn you. Act!” Apparently he thought he was making Romeo and Juliet, (Ethan’s main squeeze in named Jules and he drinks “poison” in order to see her) which leaves Cruise in the position of having to show actual human feelings. It’s not a pretty sight. In between explosions, Ethan dwells on his love for Jules, his fear that she could be hurt, and other sentiments that fall far outside Cruise’s limited abilities. The boy looks good and can do a stunt or two. Shakespeare is not his bag.
But it isn’t just Cruise’s inability to play melodrama that sinks the picture. Abrams, using the shaking camera and greenish pallet so prevalent among directors who can’t figure how to make a scene legitimately exciting, submerges the whole film in an atmosphere of cruelty and unpleasantness. He doesn’t understand the difference between a fun spy movie and Reservoir Dogs. If he was looking for deep and meaningful human drama, than he needed to dump the over-the-top action, and get a different star. For pure matinee fun, he needed to have added in some…well…fun. What he gives us is some overused stunts and an overly precious wedding. Is that ever a good idea in an espionage flick?
Hoffman is a believable, barbaric villain in a movie that didn’t need a believable, barbaric villain. A clever and twisted bad guy would have worked much better. His scenes with Cruise only serve to point out the lead’s inadequacies. The rest of the cast falls somewhere between adequate and barely noticeable. Ving Rhames doesn’t embarrass himself, which makes him the most successful person on screen. Poor Michelle Monaghan is given the role of the lackluster girl friend who may not have a single character trait. You’re unlikely to remember her when she’s not in the frame.
I like my spy pics to have a few clever moments. Hey, they’re spies. But over the three films, the IM Force has gotten dimmer and dimmer, so that now they rely on rushing in with guns blazing and hope that luck gets them out. Time after time, our hero survives by random chance. Suspension of disbelief? No way.
Every once in a while, an action movie will come along with real wit behind it (True Lies). Then there are the extremely rare instances when all the planets come into perfect alignment (Die Hard). For all the rest, it’s simple: the filmmakers need to study the James Bond movies. If the project is reminiscent of Goldfinger or GoldenEye, things are in good shape. If On Her Majesty’s Secret Service or License to Kill come to mind, things are grim. MI3 is constructed from those latter titles, without even living up to their minimal standards.