Or Mission Impossible 3, as most people would call it. It should really be called "Watch Tom Run 3" however as that is what this film consists of most of the time. Being an action movie, Lost Director JJ Abrams has gone for the easy way of making action movies in having Tom do everything quickly to match the tension. He should realise that to be uber cool, he should learn the Schwarzenegger technique of walking whilst killing people, like he did in Terminator 2. Its just so much better killing people at a slower pace, and you don't work up such a sweat. We even have one hilarious scene where we're told he has to run a mile through crowded streets in the slums of Shanghai, which he completes in well under four minutes. Run Tom Run....
The film is an improvement on the last film, but I'm not sure whether it is as good as the first. The big problem is that Tom's in it too much, but then he is the producer. His team consists of 3 others and their involvement seems quite trivial. I had the impression that if Ethan Hunt could clone himself he'd play all the team members himself, including the female role.
It tries to outbond Bond by having better gadgets, better locations, nicer cars (even if they do get blown up) and in that regards the film is successful. It's surprising how no-one thought of having magnetic bombs before, they're really cool. Rather ironically it'll be interesting to see how the new Bond film does having foregone all of this to return to a more basic plot without the gimmicks.
Speaking of plot, this story is a bit convoluted. Ethan is asked to rescue a kidnapped agent from the clutches of Owen Davian (played very well by Philip Capote Seymour Hoffman), a black market dealer with a penchant for putting bombs up people's noses. After one of the bomb goes off with hysterically funny results, Ethan decides to defy his bosses orders and kidnap Owen. After he escapes capture he then kidnaps Ethan's new wife and forces him to steal something called "The Rabbit's Foot", which disappointingly wasn't a real rabbits foot.
In this film they've tried to expand on Ethan's personality by showing his personal life, which sucks. A lot of the time these scenes are playing out you just want them to finish and the next action sequence to start. If only cinemas had fast forwards, I'd have used them quite a bit in this film. I wouldn't have minded if we'd have seen the same of the other members in the team. Instead they just pop up when needed then disappear when they don't.
I also don't like films that have a happy final scene with all the main characters having big cheesy grins, the sort of scene that Police Squad used to lampoon. I knew the film would be full of Tom's grin anyway so should really have expected it.
Oh, and apparently IMF, the agency that Ethan is a member of, stands for "Impossible Mission Force". Almost as pathetic sounding as BFG in the Doom movie standing for "Big Force Gun". And why is there no big band doing the intro? In the first film we had 2 of U2, in the second we had Limp Bizkit. In this one we have some weird brass band. Well that's what it sounds like.
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