New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

This column will go into a few spoilers, so if you haven’t seen Mission: Impossible III, then I imagine it’s because you’re on anti-depressants.

This is a bit of an unusual What Went Wrong, for while one can find a few faults in Mission: Impossible III, it generally comes across as a solid summer blockbuster. It’s a good film that appeared to have everything going for it. A great cast, a full-on marketing blitz (maybe too much marketing), with worldwide premieres; even the reviews were better than the previous film.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has retired from leading the dangerous missions at IMF, instead training new recruits. He is also engaged and looking to settle down with his fiancée Julia (Michelle Monaghan), a nurse, who believes that he works for the department of transport. Hunt is lured back into action after one of his own trainees, Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell), is captured when investigating weapons dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman). After the mission goes wrong, Hunt and his team of IMF agents; Luther (Ving Rhames), Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Zhen (Maggie Q), prepare themselves to capture Davian at the Vatican City.

The film begins with an absolutely brilliant opening, showing audiences a sequence that actually takes place during the final act. Hunt and Julia are both strapped to chairs, facing each other. Davian has a gun pointed at Julia, and if after the count of ten Hunt doesn’t tell him the location of the Rabbit’s Foot, he’ll shoot Julia (“You don’t think I’ll do it?”). As the best scene in the film, positioning it at the start is both smart and misjudged. Given the impact it has, expectations are raised, but the rest of the film just doesn’t live up to those three and a half minutes… the battle on the bridge comes close, though.

The film stays afloat with a somewhat weak MacGuffin – the Rabbit's Foot. Neither the audience nor the characters ever really find out what it is, what it’s for, or why Owen Davian wants it so badly. Believed to be a codename for a weapon (it has a Biohazard logo on it), IMF agent Benji (Simon Pegg) assumes that if someone is willing to spend $850 million on it, then it is “the Anti-God,” some kind of “unstoppable force of destructive power.” But he’s not so sure himself. Not knowing what the Rabbit’s Foot is means that we feel a bit left out, and we never really know what’s at stake.

The film’s action and excitement relies on a collection of race against time scenarios, some more exciting than others. “It’ll need 30 seconds,” says Zhen, when it comes to charging a defibrillator.

“We have two hours before they kill my wife,” says Hunt, before going ahead with his fulcrum plan to swing from one building to another.

“You only had five seconds left, do you realise that,” says Davian, after Hunt calls to explain that he has the Rabbit’s Foot.

Continued:       1       2