the Mind’s Chew Toy

With the release of the much-hyped, long awaited Mission: Impossible III, summer has finally arrived at the movies! Having been a big M:I fan since the 80’s adaptation of the television show, I couldn’t wait to check out this new chapter in the M:I saga.

Thanks to Paramount, I’ve been teased with trailers, film clips, featurettes and tv spots since the Superbowl - and it’s just gotten me more hyped for the film (as is the purpose of those things). While previews are usually ruin a film by giving to much away, the multitude of videos the public has seen on M:I:III have only served to whet the appetite by not giving away much of anything about the film.

When I found out J.J. Abrams was directing, it put me a little off-kilter. After all, I like Alias - but never saw what anyone liked about Lost. Would this first-time attempt at the big-screen ruin the M:I name, or would Abrams step up to the plate and deliver a home run to start the summer of 2006?

Tom Cruise, while a rather bizarre character in real-life judging by all the press on him lately, is still able to bring that huge on-screen persona of his to bear when he wants to - and boy does he come out with both guns blazing in M:I:III.

He’s able to take fantastical characters like a super spy (or a man fleeing aliens in War Of The Worlds (2005)), and ground them in reality with his acting. He makes the character, however outrageous it may seem at first, to be completely realistic. This has paid off for him time and time again, and it does so again in M:I:III.

This time around, the viewer gets a deeper look into the man behind the IMF, and gets to know Hunt a whole lot better. Cruise gamely steps up to the challenge, and portrays Hunt with that same down-to-earth character tinged with just a bit of superheroism that viewers have come to know and love since DePalma’s Mission: Impossible (1996). Cruise has found exactly the right way to play Hunt, and despite his odd behavior off-screen, viewers will tune in to watch him portray Hunt for as many M:I’s as they want to make.

Joining Cruise in M:I:III are a bunch of new faces, including Michelle Monaghan, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Keri Russell, Maggie Q, Jonathan Rhys-Davies, Billy Crudup, Simon Pegg and Laurence Fishburne. Michelle takes center stage with Cruise as his fiancee Julie. While she does get off to a rather rocky start (at least partly due to the viewer having never heard of her in the previous M:I films), she does manage to step up the pace, and wins over the viewer early on, managing to turn most of her scenes with Cruise into memorable moments.

Hoffman and Russell at first seemed to be rather odd choices for a villain and an IMF Agent respectively, but both turn in suprisingly good performances. Philip Serymour Hoffman manages to turn into a calculating villain that viewers will love to hate, while Keri shows she’s got a bit of strength of character hidden under her world-famous hair. The rest of the new faces also turn in very good performances, although Laurence Fishburne doesn’t get as much screen time as most viewers would have liked.

Amidst all these new faces in M:I:III, Ving Rhames shows up as Hunt’s old pal and fellow IMF Agent Luther, to provide a sense of continuity for fans of the film series. His presence provides both an easy camraderie with Hunt and a much-needed sense of familiarity for viewers. Without Rhames, the viewer would be lost amid all the new faces, and have no sense of continuity. He is the factor that ties each of these wildly different films in the M:I series together, and hopefully he, like Cruise himself, will be around for as long as the series continues.

Despite rumors of delays in shooting M:I:III thanks to script and director issues, the viewer is in for a thrill-ride of epic proportions when they get a chance to check out M:I:III in theaters.

J.J. Abrams seems to have been a great choice to direct this third film, as he manages to bring a real personal tone to the film even while the locales get more exotic and the action sequences more insane than ever before. Despite the background, he has an ability (which he’s showed before in Alias), to take world-spanning adventures and personalize them for his characters. The viewer knows exactly why the characters are doing what they do, and how desperate they are to achieve their goals.

Compare that to old Schwarzenegger/Stallone shoot-em-ups, and see if some of those old films don’t fall just a tad short. Nowadays, viewers want to know the why as well as the how, and M:I:III is able to explain the why, which makes the how that much more intense.

Before seeing M:I:III, I thought that the M:I series had reached it’s peak with world-renowned action director John Woo at the helm for M:I:II. After seeing this film, however, all I can is: WOW.

M:I:III grips you from the first scene, and leaves the viewer holding their breath until the very end. If X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and Poseidon (2006) are able to take M:I:III’s incredible start and run with it, 2006 could become a truly terrific summer season for movies.

Don’t waste anymore time - go see M:I:III today. This is one Mission that should be Impossible to wait for the DVD to see.