Mission: Impossible III Review [2]
Posted by Dave Schilling on 05.08.2006
The summer's first big letdown
CAST: Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell), Keri Russell (Lindsey), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Owen Davian), Bahar Soomekh (Ms. Kari), Laurence Fishburne (Brassel), Billy Crudup (John Musgrave), Simon Pegg (Benji Dunn), Michelle Monaghan (Julia), Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Declan), Maggie Q (Zhen)
SCR: Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci , J.J. Abrams
DIR: J.J. Abrams
STUDIO: Paramount
MPAA: PG-13
RUNNING TIME: 126 min
OFFICIAL SITE: http://www.missionimpossible.com
It is telling that throughout JJ Abrams' Mission: Impossible III that every character that ends up in distress and requires the unique talents of Tom Cruise to save them is a woman. In the past few years, it seems like every studio has tried their hand at making a female-driven action film. Catwoman, Tomb Raider, Aeon Flux, Ultraviolet. With just about all of these films being unrepentant bombs, you'd have to wonder when big budget studio films would get back to the fine art of using woman as wimpering plot devices.
Well, thank God for Mission: Impossible III. Abrams' film uses the sappy romance between Ethan Hunt and his fiancé, Julia, (Michelle Monaghan, playing a far less interesting character than she did in Shane Black's underrated Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) as the driving force behind a paper-thin narrative that only loosely connects a seemingly endless series of set pieces.
Smartly, the film opens with its most gripping moment. You've seen it in the trailers, of course. Ethan Hunt, beaten, demoralized, chained to a chair, is being taunted by Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a skuzzy arms dealer who has been seriously wronged by the most celebrated member of the Impossible Missions Force. Davian is gong to kill Hunt's fiancé unless he reveals the location of "The Rabbit's Foot," a potentially world-altering weapon of mass destruction.
Hoffman is mezmerizingly cold and ruthless as Davian. He takes complete control of the screen every moment he is on it. He plays this villain not as an over-the-top cartoon or a blithering idiot falling for every ruse laid down by the IMF. Instead, he is rock-solid in his conviction and a firm believer. He's not a believer in any cause other than "himself," and that which benefits him. He will torture and kill anyone who gets in his way.
Hoffman's performance has all the makings of a classic Hollywood heavy, and yet he's hardly in the picture. The cruel lines he casually tosses off in the trailer really are the best moments he has. It ends up as an empty thug role and nothing more. Instead of allowing the film to narrow its focus to the pyrotechnic struggle between Davian and Hunt, the screenplay by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Abrams attempts to weave in the same sort of labyrinthine narrative that was the major thorn in the side of the original. For some reason, there exists within this narrative the need to have double-crosses, conspiracies, and more than one villain when one simple narrative powered by Davian would have been sufficient.
The best material exists between Hoffman, Cruise, and Monaghan, but in an attempt to make this a "true Mission: Impossible film (i.e., a "team" working together as opposed to "James Bond with Tom Cruise"), the most intriguing character takes a backseat to fluff.
Davian is particularly interesting because he doesn't really appear to enjoy torturing anyone. On the contrary, he just does it because he's really tired of getting jerked around, and as previously mentioned, he loves to pick women. Felicity star Keri Russell has the ignominious honor of being the first target of Davian's scorn.
Monaghan's Julia exists only to give Ethan Hunt something to fight about. She is one of the most egregious examples of the "damsel in distress" in recent memory. She has one brief moment of usefulness, but for the rest of the picture, her role is that of the emotional albatross holding back our action hero.
Action is abundant in this installment in the MI franchise, by the way. Abrams stages some noteworthy set pieces, in particular the bridge attack sequence that shows the audience that Davian was not bluffing in his earlier threats of violence. The scope of the action ups the ante from the last two films. Buildings explode, debris lands on sheep, and Tom's heavily treated hair gets tousled over and over again.
As adept as he is at creating a lot of havoc, Abrams isn't nearly as good at creating those nebulous "magic movie moments" that people talk about long after the film has left theaters. There's nothing on the scale of DePalma's expertly staged Langley break-in from the underrated first film. There isn't anything as absurdly gratuitous as the whole of M:I II. The closest the film gets to a unique moment is a sequence at the end of the 2nd act which involves a couple Hong Kong skyscrapers, a smattering of nameless thugs, and some baseballs.
Abrams and company should be commended for being able to wipe the nasty taste out of my mouth from M:I II, but should take heed of a few things if given the greenlight to do another Mission or when they sit down to hammer out the next Star Trek.
"Don't waste Philip Seymour Hoffman."
Oh, and try to write a better female character next time. Those of us men who consider themselves armchair feminists wouldn't mind something more than the human equivalent of "Timmy in the well" from Lassie.
The 411: Mission: Impossible III is your first big action film of the summer and it certainly wastes no time in blowing shit up. It’s just not nearly as good as you’ve heard from the other internet pundits. A weak plot and an under-used villain are not the pieces of the puzzle needed for a satisfying blockbuster. At least we still have Superman to look forward to.
