In this third movie, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) proves to us that he's a more mature rogue agent. After all, he's training agents instead of being in the field. However, he gets called in when the only trainee he has ever recommended for field work turns up missing and someone has to go and try to save her. In the meantime, his fellow agents are shocked to find out that he's engaged and spend time inbetween shots fired trying to talk him out of it. This ultimately leads, of course, to his girl getting kidnapped by the bad guys and Ethan has to track down something called the rabbit's foot. First and foremost, what is the rabbit's foot? Does anyone know? Not the writers that's for sure. They give a monologue to their token techie in which he says every time he reads about something and doesn't know what it is that he assumes it to be a doomsday device. That's all we ever hear about it's purpose. Second, on Ethan's mission into the big building to retrieve it, we get to focus on him getting onto the roof but never see him inside the building. They spent time in the cars with the crew as they discuss he's late getting out. What happened to following their agents on their maps on their computer screens with little dots? What happened to the clips planning the mission spliced with the mission being carried out? We're all here to see impossible missions! We got jipped. Now, granted, they only had two hours to plan and execute this one but I'd think tracking their guy to monitor his progress would take about two seconds to prepare. Now my thoughts on relationships. They really try to sell the relationship between Ethan and Julie. There is a scene where they are on a rooftop and Ethan is trying to tell her he has to take a second trip out of town only a couple days after the first unannounced one and she keeps asking what's wrong in a roundabout way. And Ethan proves to be a terrible liar for an IMF agent. He just stares at her for a long time and she stares back and the scene drags on relentlessly and he asks her to trust him. She says she does and continues to stare back. Then she says, "Tell me it's real" and I just want to break into the next line from the song. They decide to run off and get married in the hospital she works in with toy rings out of a machine. The priest has a slight smile at this, but on the inside you just know he's thinking "How cheap." Then soon after this, Jules gets grabbed and held hostage. This movie lies somewhere inbetween the other two films. The first one dealt strictly with missions, gadgets, and double agents. Ethan was suspected to be the double and went rogue and met his handler met him in a restaurant. The second one was all drama, all slow motion and music all the time with the worst disease ever and the cure for it being the main targets. It also focused on a girl being in trouble again that Ethan falls head over heels for within a few minutes of meeting her. His handler was Anthony Hopkins and they met in a darkened room. Now in this movie, Ethan meets his handler once in a 7-11 and then they are always at main headquarters together and you get to watch bureaucracy at work. You see a few missions but they are always distracted talking amongst themselves while working them out. Like it's another day at the office and nothing major is at stake. They throw this relationship that hasn't really developed onscreen to be the big motivating factor and don't explain the foot.Read full review
Tom Cruise is back in another action packed adventure as Special Agent Ethan Hunt in the third installment of this multi-million dollar film saga. This one does not disappoint. Familiar and new cast additions are well acted out, with Ving Rhames returning as Hunt's techie sidekick Luther. Newbies include Philip Seymore Hoffman who is severely underplayed as the deliciously nasty baddie; Laurence Fishburne and Billy Crudup as Hunt's superior officers; Kerri Russell as a newly trained agent on her first big assignment; Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Maggie Q as Hunt's newest team members and Michelle Monaghan as Hunt's lady love Julia. Hunt has toned down his Missions and is happily training newbie agents while planning to settle down with perky doc Julia. One of his newest and brightest trainees is captured (oops) while trailing master baddie Davian (Seymour-Hoffman) and Hunt pops over to Europe with his team to rescue her, alive, which they fail to do. After the dressing down for both overrating the agent upon her graduation, and for failing to return her in one piece by Agency bigwig Brassel (Fishburne) and his underling Musgrave (Crudup), Hunt decides to take matters into his own hands and capture the thus far uncapturable Davian (after a brief stop at the hospital to get married). The thoroughly nasty Davian, sneering and threatening everyone during his brief captivity, promises to make Hunt pay for his insolence and is quickly extracted from Hunt's clutches by a team of rocket-launcher bearing, Marine-style ninjas. Hunt goes on the run to save his wife, his life, and an unknown horrifying WMD called the Rabbit's Foot, all while trying to figure out who exactly is doublecrossing whom. The action is typical and non-stop and Cruise turns in another athletic performance as the special agent who just makes everyone else look lame, as long as he's not waxing eloquent about the mysteries of love (boooooring!). The pace is swift, the underlying story improbable but never impossible, and the spectacle and thrill of a big cinema explosion is all there to a hugely satisfying degree. MI fans will get their fix here. CONS - Some arbirtrary plot twists; Seymour-Hoffman was underused in his role. PROS - Cool stunts, explosions, gunplay, an awesome musical score, and a seemingly impossible mission.Read full review
Like or hate Tom Cruise, in my opinion he does a great job in this movie! Well written and directed it has a lot of the things you expect from the Mission Impossible Saga. Shoot-outs, explosions and plot twists! Cruise does a great job as the troubled husband when his wife is taken. I was really glad to see that they got Ving Rhames to come back, it wouldn't be the same without him. Philip Seymore Hoffman plays the part of the sadistic arms dealer to perfection. My rating is 8 out of 10 Stars
This movie is what action movies are all about. It keeps you entertained from start to finish, and it does pretty well in other ways. The story is still pretty good, nowhere near as good as the first one, but it's still good. Some people may say that the save-the-world theme is old, but that's what action movies are about. Give me one James Bond film where 007 didn't do that. Give me any other action movie without that theme. Lord of the Rings had it. Star Wars had it. So does the fact that M:I-2's story revolves around someone saving the world make the movie bad? No way! It's the kind of plot that makes an action movie an action movie. Moving on. Like others have stated, the purpose of action in these movies is not to seem totally realistic, but to be really entertaining and fun to watch. Actually, it still is pretty realistic. What's all this junk about Ethan hitting all his shots (Which is pretty unrealistic, I'll admit)? Didn't any of you watch the Biocyte shootout? How many of his shots hit one of Ambrose's men? Maybe a quarter of them! He's still human and has down-to-earth abilities, not completely unrealistic superhuman stuff that a lot of people criticize. And besides, until the road chase, it is perfectly reasonable that Ethan didn't get shot! Half the time he was behind a wall or lurking in the shadows, waiting for the moment to go Splinter Cell on a patrolling guard. Anyway, sorry I lingered. The acting in this movie is great. Tom Cruise gives Ethan Hunt a very human qualities. Thandie Newton, who plays Nyah Hall, also does the same for her character. Ving Rhames returns to the comic-relief character Luther (the brilliant computer programmer from M:I), and continues to give Luther the comical humor from the first movie. John Polson is introduced as the Australian helicopter pilot Billy Baird, and also gives a lot of humor to the movie. And by the way, both Rhames and Polson do a great job of acting besides the humor, and bring the characters to life very well. Dougray Scott is the villain in this movie, and does it very nicely. He gives Sean Ambrose the kind of madman look and nicely combines it with cold-blooded intelligence to make the character a very good villain. And finally, Anthony Hopkins is Ethan's new leader, and does a very good support role. What about the music? Well, if you've seen the first movie, the music is just the same with a little metallic feel to it. And if you haven't, then don't worry, you won't be dissapointed. This is a great action movie that will keep you entertained throughout the two hours of the film, and does well in areas that some action films don't quite succeed in, despite what others say.Read full review
I own all three of the "Mission: Impossible" movies and I think that this one is probably the one I'll end up re-watching the most. I saw it in the theater and decided to buy the DVD because the movie is fast-paced, funny, exciting, and definitely never dull. Compared to the first film in the series (which I also really like and have re-watched many times) this film is more constantly engaging; again, never a dull moment. The thing that really makes this one better to me though, is the emotional base that is established with the relationship between Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his fiance, which comes across so well (in my opinion) because of J.J. Abrams' directing, and having a villian (played exceptionally well by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) that is so easy to hate. The one thing that I disliked about this film is that the audience barely gets to know the other IMF agents that Ethan works with on his missions, which is something that was done so well in the first movie. Overall, however, I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone (male or female) who enjoys story and character-driven action movies, and it's worth owning rather than renting because it is very re-watchable.Read full review
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