Mission Impossbile: III

One's tempted to say Tom cruises through another movie, but clearly he has made every effort in this third instalment of the Mission Impossible film franchise to make sure we understand that he suffered, really suffered for us.

The plot: Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has retired from active field duty with the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) - he now trains agents. He has found a beautiful woman (who looks oddly like Katie Holmes) and is settling down to a life of domesticity. The movie opens with his engagement party where we find out that his cover story is that he works at the Motor Vehicle Department studying traffic patterns and can lip read.

But just when Ethan thinks he's out, they drag him back in. One of his bosses tells him that his star pupil has been kidnapped and the information she has is so important that they want to rescue her - normally killed or captured IMF agents are "disavowed". His paternal instincts kick in and he assembles a team to rescue her.

I'll dispense with descibing all the action-packed details - car chases, battle with robot flying drones, the usual rubber mask that looks real even when standing a few centimetres away - except to say that i can barely remember them. They were nothing special.

In summary: The dialogue in some respects was atrocious, particularly the bad guy explaining why he betrayed the IMF. Please, George Lucas could have written it. This film was more about showing us that Tom Cruise can act like a normal, loving husband on screen than furthering the MI franchise. As a general rule, secret agents don't get married and have normal lives - the only film to pull this off has been the fantastic True Lies. That was only possible because of the partial tongue-in-cheek nature of the film and the expanded role given to Jamie Lee Curtis. Letting secret agents have normal home lives is like letting Maddy and Dave sleep together (any Moonlighting fans out there?).

The Casablanca comparison: Rick Blaine never would have left Ilsa to go back into the fight. He knew and understood that once the commitment was made, he was out of the game. Thus he had to go and do things that she couldn't be a part of. Hunt doesn't learn this lesson and pays dearly for it. A boring comparison/comment, I know, but Tom is just too earnest here to give much inspiration.

The rating: 6 out of 10, which is more than I can say I would have given MI2. The action here is good, the dialogue atrocious and Cruise tries too hard to show us how fast he can run and how he's a normal guy.

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