Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

Search cinema listings

Browse cinemas A-Z

Search 20,000 reviews

 

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Director: JJ Abrams

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

JJ Abrams, the director of ‘Mission: Impossible III’, is keen to persuade us that it’s a film to engage the head and heart as well as the adrenal glands. This is ‘not a movie about a spy’, he insists, but ‘about a man who is a spy’, struggling to reconcile his personal life and his work, ‘relatable’ to us all. And, as creator of TV’s ‘Alias’ and ‘Lost’, Abrams has a good track record of making audiences suspend disbelief about ordinary people in extraordinary situations.

Here, he faces two main problems: first, this man’s job involves swinging between Shanghai skyscrapers, pursuing helicopter dogfights through windmill farms and piloting speedboats that burst out of the Vatican in balls of flame; second, this man is Tom Cruise, who is to ordinary what Liberace was to plain. It’s hard enough to watch him doing a promotional walkabout without thinking of furniture-pouncing histrionics and unusual birthing techniques; a story about a man desperately trying to prove his love while simultaneously pursuing a ruthless global campaign hardly takes your mind off it.

That said, ‘M:I3’ does play out marginally more sensibly than its predecessors. Just as he gets engaged (to Michelle Monaghan), superagent-turned-trainer Ethan Hunt is drawn back into the field to tackle no-nonsense psycho-dealer Philip Seymour Hoffman, who manages to seem threatening even when being dangled from a bomber’s fuselage. There are plentiful perilous countdowns, most of the set-pieces are impressively mounted – notably the strafing of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge – and, in its own silly way, the pay-off offers a glancing blow at US foreign policy. Relatable? No. But quite fun.

Author: Ben Walters

Time Out London Issue 1863: May 3-10 2006


  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields





Top Stories

James Marsh on ‘Man on Wire’

James Marsh on ‘Man on Wire’

James Marsh tells David Jenkins the amazing story of ‘Man on Wire’ and how he saw the Twin Towers go up – and come down

Gurinder Chada on ‘Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging’

Gurinder Chada on ‘Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging’

Gurinder Chada, the director of Brit hit, 'Bend it Like Beckham' discusses her new film, ‘Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging’ with Wally Hammond

A holiday guide to movie dystopias

A holiday guide to movie dystopias

‘Going anywhere nice this summer, sir?’ To celebrate the release of Pixar’s sublime post-apocalyptic robo-romance ‘Wall-E’, Time Out offers a tour guide of the best future worlds in film

Eddie Murphy's Crimes Against Cinema

Eddie Murphy's Crimes Against Cinema

We all remember the comic highs of 'Beverly Hills Cop' and 'Bowfinger', but Eddie Murphy has been in a fair few stinkers as well. Time Out to presents a handy rundown of his ten darkest cinematic hours...