FILM - "Mission Impossible III"

For a summer action film that begins neither in summer or with action, Mission Impossible 3 is, impossible as it may seem, a thrilling spy movie. It has the exotic locations (China, Germany, Rome), it has the extreme stunt (BASE jumps), lots of chases (on car, on foot, by chopper), a great plot (filled with the requisite twists), and slick espionage (of the Impossible Mission Force kind). It also has Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays a ruthless arms dealer in the most simplistic (and sinister) fashion. So okay, Tom Cruise is once again Ethan Hunt, but that's okay, and given the way J. J. Abrams kicks him around (Murphy's Law hurts), even the most stalwart Cruise-haters will enjoy this film.

The stakes are also higher than ever: the spy genre is usually devoid of anything beyond a one-night stand, but this film opens with Davian (Hoffman) about to shoot Hunt's wife (Michelle Monaghan) right in front of a very helpless Ethan; if that's not enough, he's also got a bomb in his head. The film then kicks back to happier days, explaining just why Davian is so ticked at Hunt (a kidnapping in Vatican City, i.e., the heist of all heists), and why Ethan's come out of retirement on the day of his engagement (the disappearance of one of his trainees). With the exposition done, the film lurches into a series of high-octane missions, all of which are aided and abetted by Hunt's lovable team (Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q.). Take that, Oceans 13; this is a rougher, and therefore more exciting, version of what you do. That's not all the star power either: Billy Crudup and Lawrence Fishburne play the IMF executives overseeing operations, and Simon Pegg (of Shaun of the Dead) makes a cameo as the tech guy.

J. J. Abrams, who has perfected the art of mixing a little action with a lot of spying on TV's Alias, is the perfect director here, and brings the emphasis of the Mission Impossible series back to being about impossible missions. The action itself is the reward for all the stealthy sequences, and the script resembles a French dinner: the courses keep coming. There's no choice regarding whether or not to see this film: accept the mission and live vicariously for the next 126 minutes.