M:i:III Mission Impossible 3
J.J. Abrams was the perfect choice to take over this ailing movie franchise. If anything, he is perhaps too perfect in that he has just gone ahead and made a feature length episode of his show Alias, just with Tom Cruise in place of the much sexier and saner Jennifer Garner.
The extravagant heists and, well, impossible missions are there. The geeky tech guy shows up. The Alias standard time jumping - starting the film at the climax – check! The double crossing, inter-spy agency politics, the fake job, never knowing who to trust, the pains of keeping your life secret from those you love and endangering their life with your secret are all straight from his show.
In translating his small screen vision to a Tom Cruise cinematic blockbuster Abrams has a few small victories - The bridge scene is freaking awesome even if it does make you think of True Lies – but quite a lot does not work. Ving Rhames’s attempts at humour and one-liners are downright embarrassing and Shaun of the Dead star Simon Pegg as a bumbling nerdy computer tech comic relief guy doesn’t really work, but than again I’ve never found the bumbling nerdy computer tech comic relief in Alias at all amusing either. Philip Seymore Hoffman plays his stock-standard villain as very cold and cool and emotionless as possible, but since we never really uncover his greater plan the character never evolves at all.
One thing Abrams has done is put some focus back on the team, as per the original series I suppose, if that’s something you’re still holding on hope for. Well actually scratch that. There’s no focus on them (with the exception of a hilarious ‘prayer’ moment two of them share), they’re just in it more to help Hunt out. These are Cruise’s movies, and don’t you forget it!
As for the big McGuffin, the mysterious "Rabbit Foot" devise the bad guy is after, I don’t know if I should be totally insulted by the fact that they don’t even try to explain what the hell it is, or if it’s kind of a relief that they’ve acknowledged how pointless the whole thing is after all.
Still, for a guns’n’explosions action movie fare it is mostly good, occasionally very good, sometimes very tacky and downright stupid. Much like Alias I suppose.