My Review of Mission Impossible 3

Starring Tom Cruise, Laurence Fishburne, Philih Seyour Hoffman

 This movie restored my faith in the MI franchise, I would not be surprised if we see the fourth installement in the near future. Its main attraction were not only breathtaking stunts and the pace of action, which could give you a vertigo, but also a much more emotional Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), way above the average in the previous MI movies.

It all starts with the scene of Ethan’ s interrogation by some rather mean people. We don’t know yet what this about, but it is clear that the situation is dire – Ethan is handcuffed to a chair and the interrogator tries to get the information from him by threatening a woman, sitting in front of Ethan tied up and gagged. The man is accusing Ethan of bringing him not something called the rabbit foot, but something else. It would have been even comical if he had not waved a gun around the woman’s head and was frighteningly oblivious to Ethan’s desperate pleas to let the woman go. In the end of the first part we don’t get to see what eventually happened, but this cliffhanger was quite a good indication of a very charged, dynamic movie.In a strong counterpoint to this scene the movie then brings us to the past when it all started with one simple phone call to a plain employee of the Transportation Department (a cover for the civilians) Ethan Hunt during his engagement party. One of his trainees in the IMF -Impossible Mission Force -ha-ha, that name was really funny!-has been kidnapped and held as a hostage some place in Berlin, they’ve got to get her out. The whirlwind operation(four agents against numerous enemies inside the building – after all it’s a movie, remember? Who cares if it’s realistic or not!) goes without a hitch, the kidnapped agent is placed into helicopter, but on the way to it she started to complain about pain in her head and she was dead a few seconds after the take-off from what looked like a small explosion inside her brain. A stunned group of agents vow to find out why it’s happened and start to investigate the arms dealer Davian, responsible for her kidnapping (Philip Seymour Hoffman). The dead agent was surveilling him before her abduction.In turn they kidnap him in a beautifully timed operation during a charity event in the Vatican that he was attending. Unfortunately, on their way back, during a heated interrogation when Ethan is trying to get Davian to talk his teammate carelessly calls him by the name. Davian stores away this personal information promising Ethan that he will be free and then he’ll make Ethan pay by taking away his wife or girlfriend and killing her in front of him. They are met in the airport by more IMF agents, but as they drive along the bridge the convoy comes under attack by helicopters. Mayhem ensues, where Ethan and his friends manage to bring some harm to the unknown attackers, but in the end of it Davian is gone, freed as he promised. Fearing that his next step would be to fulfill his other promise and go after Julia Ethan frantically heads for the hospital where Julia was snatched right at the time when he was looking for her. As frantic Ethan runs out to the street he is surrounded by a group of the IMF agents who are supposed “to bring him in”. At the same time a caller on his cell phone informs him that Julia has only 48 hours to live if he does not bring the caller something called “rabbit foot”. Though he is overpowered, completely immobilized and brought into the IMF facility he does manage to break free with the help of a friend. To divulge the rest of the story here would be a complete spoiler, so I should better stop, though this being a Hollywood movie we all know in the end everything was a-ok, so I don’t think anyone would be surprised if I mentioned it here.As I said before, I personally found Tom Cruise much more emotional in the movie and that was part of his charm, in addition to all the action and great stunts. Another thing is that the rest of the cast is very much up to par and they are a very big part of the movie’s appeal. There were some veterans and some new faces, which I have not seen before, but they worked seamlessly along side each other. Ving Rhames (great as usual), Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q created a formidable team of agents working with Ethan, Billy Crudup was absolutely great as Ethan’s friend and commander John Musgrave (a very cloak and dagger role as it turns out) and let’s not forget Laurence Fishburne, whose powerful presence on the screen is always adding charge to the already electrified atmosphere of the movie. The result – a very watchable blockbuster, which I’ll be definitely watching time and again.