Mission Impossible III Release Date: May 5, 2006 Starring: Tom Cruise, Michelle Monaghan, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Laurence Fishburne Directed by: J.J. Abrams
GLENN KENNY'S MOVIE REVIEW (posted 5/4/06)
TV wunderkind J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost, etc.), making his feature-film debut, does a more-than-workmanlike job of balancing the requisites of the hyper-budgeted blockbuster espionage thriller with fulfilling all the post-adolescent thrill-ride (and more) fantasies of star Tom Cruise in the third installment of this putatively never-fail franchise. Abrams (with co-screenwriters Alex Kurtzmanand Roberto Orci) concoct a pretty coherent plot packed with the twists we've come to expect (yeah, there's a lot of genre fatigue in that oxymoron, you betcha) and the big action set-pieces that are the bread and butter of the franchise (and are a little more pummeling than they were in the previous two pictures). Abrams tucks in some pretty clever and/or unexpected references along the way (the storyline's "rabbit foot" is a close cousin to a Scottish object much beloved of director Alfred Hitchcock), but ultimately how much this movie hooks you beyond the trickery and adrenaline will have to do with just how much you're invested in seeing Cruise flawlessly execute a lot of "that would be so cool if we could..." bouncing-off-cars and hanging-off-stuff. Of course, one of Cruise's most deeply cherished ambitions is to be a great actor, and this movie goes to great lengths to let him do that—sort of. You'll understand what I mean during the sequence in which there is more than one Philip Seymour Hoffman on the screen.
—Glenn Kenny
