Mission: Impossible 3: Movie Review

Finally caught up with this third in the series of a rather tired franchise (hated MI2 with a passion) and caught myself pleasantly surprised. Read on!

Mission Impossible 3 (2006): ***

Entertainment at its nonsensical best. That probably sums up the latest Tom Cruise wannabe-Bond spy thriller directed by JJ “Lost” Abrams. Typical Lost style, Abrams first intrigues the audience with his characters and theme, then raises the bar with breathtaking action and visuals but finally cops out in an irritating, dissatisfying anti-climax. In MI3, add yawningly-predictable to the adjectives. Which is quite disheartening for a film as slick as this where the build-up, the characters, the action, the sleuthing, the gadgetry, everything pointed towards a more impressive shocker of a climax. But alas!

Still, there’s just about enough to justify the admission price. The action scenes, first and foremost of all. The one thing that MI3 will be always talked about are its long-drawn action sequences. Although the very first one-which involves Cruise rescuing a captive fellow agent and ends in a chopper chase amidst a windmill field-is fairly decent, its really in the second one where Cruise’s character plots to kidnap Hoffman’s character from inside the Vatican that MI3 is in its finest element. As if the whole sequence wasn’t exciting enough, the immediately following showdown amidst the top of the bridge with missiles, flying cars, blasts (you get the picture, right?) is splendid.

It’d be sacrilege to even think about things as human as endurance, ability to slide full-speed atop a skyscraper slope and still managing to hang on etc. This is the stuff impossible’s made of. Physics-defying and biologically-inconceivable, if you don’t think too hard, watching these on-screen spies turn into adrenalin-fuelled robots can be great fun.
What gives the action sequences an extra edge is the frenzied, flashily-edited handheld camera-like cinematography coupled with a thumping background score (remember Bourne Supremacy?). Gadgetery and masks–two other staple motifs of the genre are also used with innovation and some of the stuff like planting a time-detonated electrical charge right inside the brain of the captive is very thoughtfully sewn into the screenplay (yes, the hero gets planted with one too), besides being fiendishly clever.

Lead performances are of a high order too and given the writer’s penchant for driving into cliche after cliche after cliche, its really these actors who lend flesh into their otherwise bland characters and a plot-less collage of blasts and chases. Tom Cruise, for once. The energy and the intensity with which this actor enacts the lead role makes even the most humanely impossible stunts believable. Apart from doing the tendon-tearing runs and skyscraper jumps, we are meant to be seeing this “vulnerable, caring” side of his chararcter, Ethan Hunt and suprisingly enough, Cruise rises to the occassion and does far more justice to the scenes with his on-screen wife Keri Russell (who apparently was found recently quoting that her new husband kisses better than Tom–going by which I am not quite sure how this stacks up with my critique of their on-screen kisses but yea, they make a decent couple). Yea, so Cruise really looks very up-to-the-job and rather too serious for the role (so much so in fact that midway through the film you really want to shake him and tell him to take it easy. You want to tell him that he is the hero, and this is his own Mission Impossible. Come what may –he’ll have his wife, he’ll kill the baddie and even manage a promotion at his IMF).

Okay so I digressed. There are two more guys who really make MI3 worth watching once. One’s Philip Seymour Hoffman whose cool composure even when flung mid-air by Cruise is frightening. The opening sequence has him pointing the gun at Cruise’s wife and Cruise chained in front. Watching him count down as he enquires Cruise about a certain “rabbit’s foot” is spine-chilling stuff.

You normally wouldn’t find much comedy in these hung-up-about-action-and-gadgetery flicks, but thankfully there’s some snippets of comic genius by British actor Simon Pegg to be enjoyed. In his own clumsy, self-deprecatingly funny way, as he explains what the “rabbit’s foot” really could be and why the whole of the bad-world in the movie are mad after it is one great scene! His other Brit counterpart, Jonathan Rhys Meyers however gets stuck in the same-old superhero sidekick mode, and so does Laurence “Morpheus” Fishburne.

So, here’s what you have in the end-a brilliant opening sequence, some terrific action and spies for the most part of two hours along with actors who try their level best to convince how surprised they really are by the whole outcome. Take this bait and have a ball.

Or if you are one of those who have the misfortune of watching more than three B-grade spy thrillers, prepare to feel shortchanged. You’ll never know what the rabbit’s foot really is or what the whole fuss was about but still, despite these nibbling frustrating queries, you won’t mind wasting your popcorn, just this once!