From its shocking opening sequence to its roaring, panic-filled finale, Mission: Impossible III never lets up on the action, never gives the audience time to catch its breath.
Tom Cruise, in fine form, whether dashing madly alongside the canals of Shanghai or swinging on a tether between two of its gleaming new skyscrapers, seems indefatigable as he races from one improbable adventure to the next. The only question: Why doesn't he, or any of the other characters for that matter, show any hint of jet lag as the plot zips from Germany to Rome to Virginia to China?
J.J. Abrams, the director who co-wrote the script with the writing team of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, honed his skills on such hit TV adventures as Lost and Alias, for which Kurtzman and Orci also wrote. Abrams draws on his past successes in his feature film directorial debut, sometimes double-crossing the characters, as well as the audience, with a script that's filled with red herrings and situations that aren't what they at first seem.
The writers have borrowed from Alfred Hitchcock in inventing what the late director called the "MacGuffin," a rather indefinable something that everyone in the plot is chasing after. The script turns on it, but no one, even most of the characters in the film, are not quite sure what it is. In Mission: Impossible III it's something that evil mastermind Owen Davian (Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman) calls the "rabbit's foot." Davian deals in super-secret advanced weapons technology, selling to the highest bidders who are usually unscrupulous demagogues hoping to control the world. The "rabbit's foot" is offhandedly described as an "anti-God" weapon whose unleashed force could destroy much of civilization.
But it's not the most important thing to Cruise's Ethan Hunt, a member of the Impossible Mission Force, something that sounds like a name picked out of a comic book. Saving his wife's life is the driving force for him. At the start of the film Ethan is in a dirty room, shackled opposite his wife, Julia (Michelle Monaghan), a naive innocent who knows nothing of her husband's career until she suddenly finds herself trussed up and threatened by Davian. He says he will kill her if Ethan does not divulge the whereabouts of the "rabbit's foot." The scene is played out for several panicky moments, then a gunshot rings out and Abrams cuts to the film's opening credits.
Most of the rest of Mission: Impossible III is told in flashback, showing us how Ethan and Julia got to this frightening moment, which is reprised at the end and then carried a little bit beyond.
It's in the balance of the film that Abrams demonstrates his skills at holding an audience in his grip with a series of non-stop thrilling adventures. A helicopter chase between the swinging blades of wind turbines. A hold-your-breath kidnapping and body switching caper inside the Vatican. An explosive attack on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. A swing between two of Shanghai's tallest buildings. A parachute dive out of a skyscraper. A car chase through Shanghai's gaudy, neon-lit streets.
Through all the mayhem, Cruise maintains a sense of tight-lipped, can-do determination. If anyone can thwart Davian's dastardly schemes, it is he.
The rest of the cast does what it can with sparsely filled-in roles, including Hoffman, who is required merely to play intense and menacing, which he does with a lot more ease than it took to create the fully imagined character of Truman Capote in his Oscar-winning role.
Monaghan is winningly warm as the nurse Ethan falls in love with and marries. Laurence Fishburne is authoritative and demanding as Cruise's no-nonsense boss. Billy Crudup, as Ethan's handler, is the kind of thoughtful guy you'd want to have in your corner. Ving Rhames scores solidly as Ethan's right-hand man. Keri Russell looks like she knows her way around heavy guns, although much of her role requires her only to look bruised and unconscious, yet still pretty.
Mission: Impossible III is a big-box-of-popcorn kind of movie. And while passing the popcorn, don't forget the smelling salts.
mjanuson@projo.com / 401-277-7276
****
Mission: Impossible III
Starring: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Billy Crudup, Michelle Monaghan, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Keri Russell, Maggie Q, Laurence Fishburne.
Rated: PG-13, contains violence.
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