I actually really like this movie. I’ll be honest, I actually even like the John Woo directed, do-there-really-need-to-be-doves-at-that-exact-moment second Mission Impossible movie. This one however, I felt was better on all accounts.

For starters there was finally not one but 2 knock-out female characters (Michelle Monaghan, of one of my all-time favourites; Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Maggie Q, of probably about twenty Asian films which are about a seductive female assassin of some sort) as opposed to one shitty one in Thandie Newton (MI:2) and that crap French chick (MI:1).

My first question though, is (especially since in this one he’s retired) why does Ethan Hunt continue to put himself through hell for the Impossible Mission Force and the USA? Why would you even give a shit, let alone risk your life and those of the ones you love? The government leadership seems to constantly double cross him and never ever have his back! If they aren’t betraying him or secretly are the enemy, they’re interuping his holiday and then sending him off on a suicide mission with nothing more than a ‘well then you better get cracking, Ethan! :))’.

Example of a typical Ethan Hunt recruitment:

Ethan, we have a mission for you
But it’s my wedding day and the season finale of Lost AND my first child is being born as we speak!

Yes, well, we need you to go to Siberia with only yourself and Luther Stickle, to retrieve a 65 kilo Gorilla named Pansy from an impregnable fortress of death guarded by a crack team of 800,000 ex-Israeli freedom fighters, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Voltron and the re-incarnated soul of Bruce Lee.

I can’t do that!

You mean it’s going to be difficult?

Hah, VERY!

Well it’s not Mission difficult, Mr Hunt

And what the hell point is taking Luther Stickle anyway? He is somehow considered an integral members of this elite team, yet all I have ever seen him do in all three films is sit in a leather jacket, at least 10 miles from even the slightest hint of danger and monitor Tom Cruise’s position on a flat screen LCD. I could do that!

Somehow despite the character being as flimsy as Lance Bass’ penis at a strip club, Philip Seymour Hoffman who is probably one of the greatest character actors in the universe somehow manages to make you forget that the amount of character development there is to Owen Davian is precisely zero. He is so good that you don’t give a shit why he’s such a dickhead you just roll with it.

And speaking of Hoffman talk about complete and utter bullshit. While it was absolutely ludicrous in the second Mission Impossible movie when it seemed that somehow agents were able to craft EXACT replicas of other peoples’ faces and wear them like masks, the envelope is pushed even further in MI:3 by actually showing us the machine that makes this marvel possible. You could have given Michaelangelo a lifetime supply of clay and time and asked him to make a perfect replico of a penis and you would expect some scaling errors. But somehow the MI team have in their possession a mechanism that allows them to perfectly recreate someone’s face (skin tone, hair etc) in roughly ten minutes with nothing more than a couple of photographs. Awesome!

The action is of course thick and fast in this one. I’m pretty sure though, that at certain points in this movie we have to knowingly step outside of reality, when Tom Cruise slides down the slanted side of a sky-scraper with an obvious momentum/trajectory and yet somehow manages to pop 4 trainer killers with machine guns and emerge unscathed. THis is action on par with when in I, Robot, Will Smith escapes a gigantic killer robot by surfing away from the exploding house on a door.

There is a particularly cool scene, where Philip Seymour Hoffman goes all dog day afternoon and threatens to kill Ethan’s wife if he doesn’t give him the ‘rabbits foot’, which goes something like this:

Give me the rabbit’s foot
Oh, I want to give you the rabbits foot

Give it to me or she dies

Ethan!!

1….

Hey, you want the rabbit’s foot… I’ll get you the rabbit’s foot..

2….

Hey, help me help you! You want the rabbit’s foot I’ll get it for you! Help me help you!

Hey Jerry, Imma sign with Bob Sugar, man…..

3….

No hey, hey don’t sign with Sugar, Bob Sugar is a child..

Well then you better show me the money, Jerry!

I will show you the money

No no not show you, show me!

SHOW ME THE MONEY

SHOW IT TO ME!

MONEY SHOULD BE THERE AS WE SPEAK

AH OKAY YES I SEE IT NOW THANK YOU

Uh…

Okay I think I went a little off course there

The ending is of course the standard MI deal, Cruise walks off into the proverbial sunset with a new girl for the third straight movie. The ending in this one however is second to none, when despite being lied to by Ethan her whole life and then almost killed as a result, his fiance chooses without any thought for plausability, to stay with him, and then as a good will gesture i suppose, the United States government, without any thought for plausability allows her into the ultra top secret meet and greet with the nation’s top undercover spies.

Anyway I liked the movie.