Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Mission: Impossible 3


RATING: B+

Mission: Impossible 2 may have been a financial success, but it was pretty poorly received (and in all honesty, it was a pretty poor movie); so it's fairly easy to see why it took a little bit longer for them to get a third one out. After seeing what happens when John Woo directs an Mission: Impossible movie, everyone was probably thinking, "Okay guys, let's make sure we don't screw up this badly next time." 

Once again, we are given a whole host of new characters for this film, with Ethan and Luther being the only familiar faces from the first two movies. In this movie, Ethan has actually retired from IMF field work and is now just a trainer instead, and is settling down with his fiancee/wife Julia... until he gets a call about a former trainee of his having gotten caught in a high-risk mission involving a sadistic/psychopathic weapons dealer named Owen Davian. And it all skyrockets from there, essentially. We're given a new plot device of sorts in the form of the "Rabbit's Foot"--something Davian is after, though we never really find out what exactly it is (and the movie barely seems to care either). 

This film doesn't exactly go to back to the suspenseful/mysterious style of the first movie, but it avoids the stylish yet boring (yeah, I know, that makes loads of sense) style of the second one, going for a more frenetic action-packed style. And it works quite well, as we get quite an exciting film that does still have suspenseful bits, as well as some humor to lighten things up now and then. It also has an all-star cast, including Tom Cruise (of course), Philip Seymour Hoffman, Michelle Monaghan, Laurence Fishburne, and Keri Russell. 

It is admittedly somewhat convoluted on the story front; we don't always know exactly what's going on or why things are being done, and as mentioned earlier, we don't exactly find out what the "Rabbit's Foot" is (we find out what "type" of thing it is, but literally nothing else and it's still too vague to pick much else out of it). Despite that, there is a pretty surprising plot twist late in the movie. 

Despite that, the film still manages to be quite thrilling and fun without being ridiculous (mostly), and even if it doesn't quite reach the heights of the first movie, it still is a pretty good installment in the series and one that is quite overlooked. I know people tend to think of Ghost Protocol and even the most recent Rogue Nation first, but two of the other three ones that come before those really shouldn't be forgotten. M:I-III is an exciting flick on its own, and is well worth a watch. 

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