3:41pm Thursday 4th May 2006
By Damon Smith
WITH the pungent whiff of familiarity, the beautiful and buff members of the IMF return in the third and most coherent mission so far, gallivanting from home turf to Berlin, Rome and Shanghai.
Action set pieces are spectacular, beginning with an almighty bang as the team storms a heavily guarded warehouse, before various pyrotechnic-laden showdowns by land, sea and air, including a helicopter chase that almost results in the untimely demise of a flock of innocent sheep.
The three screenwriters keep the hairpin twists to a minimum and concentrate on characterisation.
But they are not adverse to the odd detour from logic or stretch of credibility, like asking us to accept that the IMF would be thwarted at a vital juncture by a dodgy mobile phone signal.
Shouldn't someone inform the megalomaniacs of the world that the good guys are powerless as long as they build their fortress in a communications black spot?
Cruise slips effortlessly back into the black togs of special operative Ethan Hunt, who has retired from active duty, and now restricts himself to training new agents, like his most recent protege Lindsey, played by Keri Russell.
Instead, he is happily building a life with fiance Michelle Monaghan, dreaming of happy families and pretending to be a researcher in traffic patterns.
That dream is put on hold when operations leader Billy Crudup sends him to find Lindsey, who has been missing for 11 hours.
He teams up with fellow agents, transportation expert Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q to save Lindsey from international weapons trader Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
However, the mission uncovers an even greater threat: Davian is attempting to sell a hi-tech gizmo called The Rabbit's Foot for 850 million dollars.
The team must recover The Rabbit's Foot, whatever that may be, before a rogue state acquires it.
Director Abrams, co-creator of the television series Lost and Alias, thrives under the intense pressure of delivering the most exciting and outrageous stunts and orchestrating carnage on a grand scale, complete with a myriad of nifty gadgets.
He opens, daringly, with a scene from the end of the film then flashes back to show us the lead up to the tragedy, arming us with enough tidbits of information so we spend the rest of the picture trying to guess what happens next.
Cruise performs many of his own stunts, adding to the authenticity and also gets to demonstrate some emotion for the romantic sub-plot, which errs on the saccharine towards the end. Indeed, the climactic action sequence is the possibly the film's weak point, with at least one flash of unintentional hilarity and a timecheck to doomsday, delivered gleefully by Hoffman's terrifically menacing baddie, that the film then wilfully ignores.
Mission Impossible III (12A): adventure, directed by JJ Abrams. Running time: 125 minutes.
Gazette rating: ***
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