REVIEW: Mission: Impossible III

J.J Abrams, you have mastered the art of suspense.

From the opening scene, Mission: Impossible III sets the adrenaline going and doesn't quit. The acting in this film are superb (Simon Pegg, I love you even more then I did after Shaun of the Dead), the plot is comprehensible while not overly simple, and the action never stops.

For two hours and ten minutes, since the first scene, my girlfriend sat there squirming and jumping and freaking out. About halfway through, after asking her repeatidly why she was reacting so intensly to the movie, I managed to get "It's scary." After the movie, I asked her to elaborate. "It's not scary in the frighting way, but scary in the way that your heart is constantly beating four times faster then it should."

That's the perfect description. The tension in the movie is immediately there, and it doesn't let up until the credits roll.

Which brings me to my first complaint about the movie. It was almost too much. At some points you feel like you really needed a break, just for a minute or two. Simply watching the movie is a real emotional drain.

My second biggest complaint involves the excellent acting. Philip Seymour Hoffman, either stop acting so damn well or ask for a bigger part. As the bad guy, I absolutly hated this man with a passion cause I belived every threat he was making. He was one scary dude; it was perfect. But there wasn't enough. He was so amazing in that role that I really wish he'd gotten about double the screen time.

My final complaint is...the plot. Like I said above, it is easily understandable while not being overly simple. But, particularly after having rewatched M:i and M:i-2 in the last couple days, some of the plot twists do seem a bit repetitive and predictable (hmm, what element does every M:i movie use to "surprise" the audience). And the plot itself didn't seem to set up its twists very well. They happened, but I didn't have the shock effect that should have been there. It was more like "oh, lookie there." Of course they may be related to the non-stop adrenline rush. The high level of tension throughout the movie makes it difficult to set up those moments effectively.

Now comes the inevitable: which of the movies in the trilogy is best.

M:i:III easily beats its immediately predecessor, M:i-2. The second installment left me thinking "you've got to be kidding me." They reused the mask trick about a million and a half times and that got quite tiring. The motorcycle chase scene managed to run beyond cool and into the realm of the absurd (particularly the part where they both jump off and collide in mid air, someone should've seen and stopped that scene from being made). Ultimately I thought part 2 was enjoyable, but only a great movie if you could step out of thinking mode for a couple hours, which shouldn't be necessary.

Comparing part 1 and 2 is, I belive, ultimately impossible. They are two very different movies. The original involved no elaborate gun fights and little in the way of fight sequences. The action that was there was well done and classic, but it was a very plot-driven movie. And that plot was superb. Watching it as a little kid it took me a lot of viewings to finally figure it all out, but that is one movie that twists and turns every second and a half. The best part of it is that in the end, almost no one is aware that any of the events of the movie actually occurred. It's a spy movie in which the characters are all shadows and do their job without anyone's knowledge. Both of the other installments move away from this genre and become action movies. What I like about M:i:III is that it combines the two to create an action movie that stays truer to its namesake then part two did. There's the "super secret spy" concept along with the "go in guns blazing" sequences.

This is a beautiful piece of cinema for every action/spy fan. If you like action in ranges from James Bond to Rambo, this is a movie you can't afford to miss. While the plot can be a bit repetiive and the action almost too non-stop, it's the perfect summer blockbuster, and one hell of a way to kick off the season.

BOTTOM LINE- 8.5/10