Mission Impossible 3

Plot

Ethan Hunt, now a trainer for IMF, and living a relatively placid life, is called back into the field to help recover a missing agent. When things go awry, he discovers that there is a mysterious arms dealer Owen Davian– who is days away from selling a mysterious ‘Rabbits Foot’ to terrorists – and Hunt is the only one who can stop him.

Direction

JJ Abrams brand of direction style is on point here, with his usual hues of yellow, green and lens flare.

His action scenes are a significant improvement on the colossal failure that was #2.

Cast/Characters

Back of course is the star of the show Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in the role he was born to play. I know he has his haters, but I’ve always found his persona to be needed, especially for a role like Hunt. His character is written to have had significant growth in the six years since the last film, now on the cusp of getting married – and distancing himself from field work.

The late great Phillip Seymour Hoffman is without a doubt the best villain the series has seen so far. He is brutal in both physical and intellectual matches with Hunt, and is exactly what the franchise needed.

Returning to the franchise is Ving Rhames as Luther – Ethan’s right hand man. And new additions, who would go on to be long running players are Michelle Monaghan as Julia, Ethan’s wife and Simon Pegg as Benny.

Screenplay/Setting/Themes

From the ‘pre-opening credits scene’ in which Davian callously ‘kills’ one of the main characters, the action scenes are pretty frequent and

Some solid work includes the attack on the bridge sequence where Cruise gets thrown into a car by the blast of a bomb. While there is no ‘overly brilliant’ stunt work other than this that the next instalments will include – this is still mid-tier. We even get a lengthy running sequence later in the film along the banks of a Shanghai River.

I liked that they included the ‘mask creation’ moment too.

Overall

It took six years for there to be a third film, and it was well worth the wait. A vast improvement on #2, with better characters like Davian, Julia and Benny – the latter two who would get to return.

A pretty solid score, especially during some of the non-dialogue scenes.

3.5/5