Aman is bound to a chair while he is forced to watch his archnemesis hold a gun to a woman’s head. The opening scene of “Mission: Impossible 3” will certainly grab your attention — too bad the rest of the film won’t.
Cruise Control: Tom Cruise reprises the role of Ethan Hunt in “Mission: Impossible 3.” Hunt has a showdown with a villainous arms-trader (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who threatens the spy’s wife.
The man in the chair is Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) — the super-spy, American hero-vehicle for one of the most self-obsessed stars in Hollywood. Hunt is front and center in this utterly pointless new installment of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. Although “M:I-3” does manage to tell a more character-driven story than the first two films, it still comes across as a bloated action flick whose only purpose is to make money and inflate Cruise’s ego.
In the first and best “Mission: Impossible,” Hunt was a smooth Impossible Mission Force agent who never flinched, even when he was flailing on a helicopter shield. Helmed by Brian DePalma, the film was a slick, plot-heavy spy thriller that kept audiences guessing.
John Woo’s cheesy follow-up not only lacked the intrigue of DePalma’s film, but did nothing to further explore Hunt’s character. Although he did have a love interest (Thandie Newton), the heroic leading man, like the rest of the movie, was all style and no substance.
Enter director J.J. Abrams (the guy behind television’s “Lost” and “Alias”), who makes his cinematic debut with “M:I-3.” Abrams decided to focus on Hunt’s personal life in an attempt to make the story more realistic than the first two films, and although it’s a little better than Woo’s version, it’s still an over-the-top fistfest with a cheap veneer of drama.
In “M:I-3,” Hunt plays your typical elite secret agent who falls in love with a cute nurse (Michelle Moynaham). But like all working men, he runs into trouble trying to balance his love life and his job as the world’s coolest super spy. However, Hunt isn’t exactly an everyman, and trying to make him appear down-to-earth makes the far-fetched premise seem even more ridiculous. In the film, Hunt has almost superhuman powers — he literally shoots down a jet plane, leaps from one skyscraper to another and gets the girl, all in a day’s work. It’s not that Cruise’s acting chops are questionable — he made a superb anti-hero in Michael Mann’s “Collateral” — but Hunt is a character so unbelievably flawless it’s hard not to interpret the role as anything other than Cruise’s self-aggrandizing alter-ego.
Hunt has to go head-to-head with an evil arms dealer, Owen Davian (a scene-stealing Philip Seymour Hoffman). Hunt must stop Davian (awesome bad guy name) when he tries to get his hands on the most destructive weapon in world. In the process, his IMF team travels the world breaking into a series of compounds that are, you guessed it, really hard to break into.
“M:I-3” does manage some fiery scenes between Hunt and Davian — Cruise and Hoffman both master the art of the intense stare-off when they confront each other. The always-entertaining Hoffman sinks his teeth into playing the role of the ultimate baddie, but he avoids the cliches of the classic villain by giving a deadpan performance. He never raises his voice or gives sarcastic remarks, and his characterizations work spectacularly.
Compared to the earlier films, the the third is somewhere in between — it lacks the sharp intelligence of “Mission: Impossible,” but it is a slight improvement from the nearly unwatchable second film. However, it still raises the question: Wasn’t one enough?
