director
J.J. Abrams
screenwriters
Alex Kurtzman
Roberto Orci
J.J. Abrams
based on
characters created by
Bruce Geller
producers
Tom Cruise
Paula Wagner
cinematographer
Dan Mindel
music
Michael Giacchino
editors
Maryann Brandon
Mary Jo Markey
cast
Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Owen Davian)
Ving Rhames (Luther Strickell)
Keri Russell (Lindsey Ferris)
Bahar Soomekh (Ms. Kari)
Laurence Fishburne (John Brassel)
Billy Crudup (John Musgrave)
Simon Pegg (Benji Dunn)
Michelle Monaghan (Julia)
Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Declan)
Maggie Q (Zhen)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 126m
u.s.
release: 5/5/06
video
availability: TBA
official
website
see also:
- mission:
impossible
- mission: impossible 2
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Those who've seen 1999's Magnolia, where angelic Philip
Seymour Hoffman pleaded with demonic Tom Cruise to reconnect
with his dying father, might watch the two of them in Mission:
Impossible III with a trace of amusement. Here, Cruise is
the angel -- secret agent Ethan Hunt -- and Hoffman, fresh from
his Oscar win for Capote,
is the blandly contemptuous weapons dealer Owen Davian (sounds
like Damien -- anti-Christ?). As the movie kicks off, Ethan is
in shackles and Davian, his gun pointed at the head of Ethan's
wife (Michelle Monaghan), demands to know where "the Rabbit
Foot" is. We don't, at first, have any idea what the Rabbit
Foot is. We don't, when the film is over, have any idea
either.
Despite the presence of Hoffman
(who more or less phones in Davian's flaccid megalomania) and
the usual slick cast -- returning M:I vet Ving Rhames,
plus Laurence Fishburne for Matrix
cred, Jonathan Rhys Myers for indie cred, and Simon Pegg for
Shaun of the Dead fans
-- this is easily the weakest of the missions impossible. Which
is saying a lot, since I didn't care for the previous two, either.
But at least the first one (1996,
Brian De Palma) and the second (2000,
John Woo) seemed to be following an interesting template: hire
a flamboyant action/suspense master and let him loose on a big-budget
spy flick. Here, Cruise and his coproducer Paula Wagner have
hired J.J. Abrams, creator of such appointment TV as Lost
and Alias (and Felicity,
whose star Keri Russell dutifully puts in ten minutes here as
one of Ethan's rookie agents).
Abrams can assemble sleek entertainment
and tell a story cleanly, but I found myself oddly nostalgic
for the previous entries, which were proudly incomprehensible
but at least had style -- De Palma's split-screen paranoia,
Woo's doves fluttering above fiery explosions. Mission: Impossible
III hustles well and, to use a David Denby trope, "moves
the metal" -- but without an outsize directorial vision
it looks even more like sub-007 than the others did. Ethan's
mission is to secure the Rabbit Foot to save his wife, but we
don't believe in their love any more than we bought Cruise and
Emmanuelle Béart or Cruise and Thandie Newton. Abrams
attempts to ground their relationship in the convivial reality
of an engagement party, but that only underscores the absurdity
that she thinks he "studies traffic patterns" instead
of covertly looking for Rabbit Feet.
There's a nice, quick little
fight scene in an elevator that makes dynamic use of the tiny
space. It's the only moment we sense any real physical engagement
with the thrills. Elsewhere, it's all kaboom and CGI. Once again,
Cruise dons a cutting-edge mask to pose as his nemesis, though
Hoffman can scarcely be bothered to act like Tom Cruise acting
like Hoffman. Give Cruise credit -- he works hard in these movies,
like an extremely conscientious quarterback making sure all his
teammates get a good piece of the play. But this is still a star-quarterback
movie, though it makes a little more of an effort to abide by
the original TV show's ensemble format. In the end, Ethan's mission
is the only one. There's never a moment where we feel the movie
could easily branch off and follow, say, Ving Rhames' character
arc -- poor, thrice-underused Ving Rhames -- and the film's halfhearted
nod to equal-opportunity mayhem, in the form of an agent played
by Irish-Vietnamese actress Maggie Q, ends up as equal-opportunity
uselessness.
At one point, Simon Pegg (also
wasted as the standard-issue dithering Brit) speculates that
the Rabbit Foot might be some deadly bit of tech known as "the
Anti-God Compound." Whoa! A MacGuffin that can actually
take down God. No, it's really just something that can
lay waste to everything -- "buildings, children, ice-cream
parlors," as Pegg explains. It rides around in a glass tube
marked by a nuclear symbol. It's implied that Davian wants to
sell it to Middle Eastern terrorists, but then he visits the
Vatican -- to meet with contacts, we're told. So ... the Pope
wants the bomb? As before, Mission: Impossible III is
geopolitically loopy, but it's also the first to come out post-9/11,
and its apolitical blitheness -- some terror must be stopped,
y'know, somewhere -- doesn't play as well as it did in
1996 or 2000. Maybe it's time for spy movies to go the way of
westerns and musicals. I for one wouldn't miss them much.
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