Super Action Meets Super Emotion
Tom Cruise And Company Do Hollywood Right
By Cole Smithey
“Mission Impossible: III” is a perfect summer blockbuster movie. From its failed- experiment opening sequence to its sharp dialogue, exotic locations, and pure spectacle, the hi-test action picture brilliantly weaves around a classic Hitchcockian MacGuffin.
Tom Cruise excels like an all-star athlete executing the bulk of the film’s impressive stunts. It doesn’t hurt that he’s surrounded by a stellar ensemble cast that includes Michelle Monaghan, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Billy Crudup, Laurence Fishburne, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
Writer/director J.J. Abrams achieves something of a minor masterpiece with a post-modern sense of humor and fetishistic infatuation with maintaining multiple layers of suspense. Fans of the original television series will appreciate Abrams’s diligent attention to the series’ trademark disguises, clever gadgets, and essential self-destructing mission message tape.
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) sweats out an intense hostage conversation. His fiancée is held hostage. He is being held too. Uber bad-guy Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) holds court. Tension buzzes around as audience members grumble about the projectionist starting the movie midway through. Is this where the movie is supposed to start? The gritty scene onscreen becomes steadily more brutal before cutting away right at its dramatic apex.
A match lights a fuse. The iconic “Mission Impossible” theme music drives its infectious heart-pounding rhythm into your brain. The seemingly miscued opening flourish announces the director’s intent at surprising his audience with visual and narrative illusions designed to stop the viewer in his or her tracks of predicting where the movie is going. This is going to be a wild ride.
J.J. Abrams also wants his audience interested in where his character’s have been. An inventive piece of screenwriting gives discreet information about exterior and interior aspects of Ethan’s identity. At his engagement party, he describes his job as a “traffic analyst” to partygoers before subtly affirming an intimate bond with his fiancée Julia (Michelle Monaghan) by reading her lips from the next room. Ethan’s and Julia’s romance is contextualized within the passion that the retired agent expresses at his job training new IMF agents. We are taunted into extrapolating on the couple’s private relationship as an emotional resource they draw from in their dangerous professional lives.
Ethan is called away from the love of his life to execute a hostage rescue. When the mission ends with less than 100% success, Ethan and his IMF boss John Musgrave (Billy Crudup) are called on the carpet by their organizational head (Laurence Fishburne). Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Owen Davian is attempting to procure an ostensibly nuclear weapon know only as the “rabbit’s foot.” Ethan must separate fact from fiction to get the weapon before Davian does.
“Mission Impossible: III” intensifies its obsession with panoramic spectacle over a series of visually challenging action episodes that stick with you after the credits roll. A phenomenal helicopter chase scene, set around an electricity windmill farm, is devastatingly captivating. When Ethan is climbing, running, or swinging across walls and rooftops in Italy or Shanghai, every camera angle emits sheer joy for the delight of seeing Tom Cruise take physical chances that made the film’s insurance company blanch.
Blockbuster movies rarely bend toward character development because they are most frequently based on a textbook format. Here, J.J. Abrams modernizes the Mission Impossible franchise by taking advantage of every scene to exhibit distinct interior aspects of the characters. Some attempts flounder, as with Luther’s (Ving Rhames) blunt questions about Ethan’s decision to become a family man Still, Abrams’s saturation approach gives the onscreen action a naturalistic edge.
J.J. Abrams lists his filmmaking abilities, as they date back to 1982, on the low- budget horror movie “Nightbeast,” to include writer, producer, director, actor, composer, miscellaneous crew, and sound department.
Most impressive is his screenwriting work which includes such films as “Regarding Henry” (1991), “Armageddon” (1998), and such TV series as “Felicity,” “Alias,” and “Lost.” Abrams brings the Mission Impossible franchise, and perhaps Hollywood, to another level. Enjoy it while you can. Hollywood isn’t usually this fortunate.
Rated PG-13. 126 mins.
