Mission Impossible 3 [M]

Ethan Hunt, having been out of the action for some time, is lured back onto the IMF field when an agent is taken hostage. Ethan’s mission, backed with his IMF team is to rescue the agent so that she may disclose the information learned on her mission. But the mission ends badly and Ethan and his team soon find themselves in the middle of their most impossible mission yet, facing a sadistic and deadly weapons dealer who is after a mysterious item known only as “the rabbit’s foot”. 

It seems that these movies just can’t hold a director down: the first one being directed a little flimsily by Brian De Palma, the second one taking on a more action-based stead, beautifully directed by Jon Woo, and now this one which seems to have finally found the perfect balance between visual action and scriptural intrigue, directed by J.J. Abrams. Definitely the most balanced of the Missions Impossible movies (so far), Mission Impossible 3 is a great movie, packed to bursting with practically everything: action, romance, deception, drama, and smatterings of light comedy. I loved it. 

Ethan Hunt, having been out of the action for some time, is lured back onto the IMF field when an agent is taken hostage. Ethan’s mission, backed with his IMF team is to rescue the agent so that she may disclose the information learned on her mission. But the mission ends badly and Ethan and his team soon find themselves in the middle of their most impossible mission yet, facing a sadistic and deadly weapons dealer who is after a mysterious item known only as “the rabbit’s foot”. 

Tom Cruise lost a bit of his charming egotistical swagger that he was dripping with in the second movie, but fair play, in this film his romantic circumstances are changed somewhat. 

What I really liked about this movie, aside from the phenomenal cast, was that it was wonderfully balanced with equally proportioned helpings of action and violence, light moments of comedy, usually achieved through the script, and drama and romance, in fact practically all of the drama that comes through in this movie is done through the romance element. 

I also really loved the story’s plot misdirection. There is a great amount of deception and twists and turns of the plot, with a fair amount of “I was really not expecting that” going on: an excellent thing to have in these sorts of movies because it keeps the audience’s attention for the entire duration. 

I loved also too, the element of mystery that this movie had, regarding the mysterious “rabbit’s foot”. The film creates a great sense of character-audience empathy because not only are we kept in the dark as to what “the rabbit’s foot” actually is, but so are our main characters. 

Starring Tom Cruise, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Billy Crudup, Michelle Monaghan, Keri Russell, Maggie Q, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Simon Pegg, and Laurence Fishburne, Mission Impossible 3 was a great film packed with mystery, drama, action, suspense, romance, plot misdirection, great special effects, and light smatterings of comedy. Easily the most stable and balanced of the films (so far), I thoroughly enjoyed it.