The Flipcritic

Regardless of what you think about Tom Cruise, whether he be an immensely talented actor who is cursed by his good looks, or a narcissistic megalomaniac of the highest order, one thing is certain: He’s money in the bank. Aside from another Tom (Hanks), no other Hollywood superstar is as consistently bankable when it comes to his movies. Love or hate him, he’s worth every penny.

Once again he delivers the goods as (his very own James Bond) Ethan Hunt in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III, filling the summer blockbuster mold to a tee. Packed with as many stunts and action sequences as both of its predecessors combined, it still manages to be coherent and thrilling if not quite convincing. An action film of this sort never sets out to make us believe in its rationale; just excite us with its execution. And that it does.

In this installment, long-retired Ethan Hunt is asked to return and rescue a fellow spy too valuable to be disavowed. Assigned a team with new members Zhen (Maggie Q) and Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), along with trusted teammate Luther Strickell (Ving Rhames) their extraction is somewhat fruitful, as they unearth the workings of a ruthless arms-dealer in Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his impending sale of the “rabbit’s foot”.

This MacGuffin sounds like a spoof, yet is being sold by Davian for just below a billion dollars. Any appendage costing that much begs us to take it seriously, and at one point is boot-shakingly described by one of Hunt’s associates as the “Anti-God”. After a cold scolding from his big boss John Brassel (Laurence Fishburne), Ethan’s little boss John Musgrave (Billy Crudup) gives him the go signal to go after Damien.

Much of this ado is done behind the back of Mrs. Hunt. Yes, between missions, Hunt marries the lovely Julia (Michelle Monaghan), a doctor who believes her husband to be an air-traffic controller. With this sore spot straight out of TRUE LIES, he hides the stress and perils of the job from his sweetheart. In a scene with a true attempt at sincerity, he asks her to trust him. And she does.

If you found that hard to swallow, try to avert your eyes from rolling once the villain states his reasons in trading for the rabbit’s foot. Still, we don’t go into any conventional action movie to find out why the action is happening. We just want it to see it happen, and what rousing sights there are to behold here. The movie’s initial rescue operation is taut and precise; with the best helicopter chase (through windmill farms) since TERMINATOR 2. Its infiltration of the Vatican walls is engaging and becomes an unwitting teaser for THE DA VINCI CODE. A siege on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge brings to mind those Harrier jets in TRUE LIES.

This kind of setup is nothing without exotic locales. The first two installments gave us England and Australia. This one hops around Italy and China. Though I cannot conceive why any terrorist would want to buy arms in the Vatican, or store nuclear weapons in a Shanghai high rise, it still makes the film darned pretty to look at. The film’s casting of Hunt’s crew has more to do with audience reach than it does with capability (Rhames for the African Americans, Q for Asians, and Meyers for Europeans). At least Mr. Meyers now plays a more masculine role for once.

Seeing Tom Cruise and Billy Crudup act side by side is an odd experience. Mr. Crudup (the golden god rocker of ALMOST FAMOUS) is the Tom Cruise of non-mainstream films, and watching them together underscores this polarization even more. He seems out of place and step with nothing noteworthy being required of him here, but perhaps his merely being cast is recognition of his marvelous work. There are better ways to reward him though.

As for Cruise, he’s the star. His focused intensity is the film’s engine, and if Harrison Ford owns the best intense look of a man in dire straits, Tom Cruise has the best intense look while running (he pretty much invented it with THE FIRM). Like Jacky Chan, he understands the intimacy a character generates once it performs its own stunts. And like a modern Errol Flynn, he dives, swoops, and ricochets through every physical scene.

If the movie has any failings, it’s that its hero’s sensibilities are out of step with the times. The idea that a super spy should have a love life is beyond comprehension. Sure Schwarzenegger pulled it off in TRUE LIES. But in essence, that movie was a comedy, whose premise depended on marital duplicity. In an era where no-nonsense agents such as Jason Bourne and the Transporter know how relationships can interfere with work, Ethan Hunt needs no such complications. Even James Bond knows that.

One only need look back at the first MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE to find why it was so satisfying. Ethan Hunt then could be vulnerable to moments of passion, but would also step back and be calculating as his opponent. Now that Daniel Craig is being groomed to play Bond as someone harder, colder, and less suave, Tom Cruise has to do the same with Hunt. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III has the thrills; the next has to be tightened up.

Posted by FLIPCRITIC at May 8, 2006 08:12 PM