I Thought the Impossible Mission Would be for Me to Like this Movie...

I wasn't the biggest fan of the first two "Mission Impossible" movies. They had some great action sequences in them, but both eliminated the team concept that I loved about both "MI" television series, and instead focused all the attention on agent Ethan Hunt, played by Tom Cruise. In between my dislike of how those two flicks were handled and Cruise being in the spotlight way to much lately as a kooky boyfriend/scientologist/daddy, I had a big chip on my shoulder about seeing MI:III. But my wife wanted to see it, and I wanted to get away from my kids, so we checked it out tonight.

It was much better than the first two "Mission: Impossible" flicks. Director/co-writer J.J. Abrams finally gets the MI thing right, and keeps the team together. I loved the idea of the Impossible Mission Forces team, and from the very start, we see Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt character as part of the team, not as a solo superhero. I've liked some of Abrams' other series, especially "LOST," so I had more faith going into this one than the others.

The basic plot of this movie is that Ethan Hunt has retired from fieldwork, and is now training other secret agents. He's settling down, is engaged, and is trying to move on with his life. Of course, if he did settle down, that would be the end of the franchise, so he gets pulled back in to help rescue another agent. The other agents are played by Ving Rhames (who I think is the only other veteran from the other flicks), Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Maggie Q. Their bosses are played by Billy Crudup and Laurence Fishburne, and even though some of those characters are little more than a sketch, each plays an important part in the movie.

The big villain of the piece is Owen Davian, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and he's excellent, as usual. I love cool, intelligent, cold villains, and he's the best. More an information and power broker than a conventional villain, he's definitely a 21st Century baddie, and I love it.

The locations are exotic, the action set pieces are fantastic, and the cool gadgetry are the best of any of the "Mission Impossible" films. The music, by frequent Abrams-collaborator Michael Giacchino, is a bit too "LOST" at times, but it works the theme from the television series in enough times to get it in my head, and for the quieter moments in the movie, it carried the mood enough that the enormous audience was completely silent. Very cool moments there.

There's a certain plot point that I think the writers in this series are falling back on too often, but I don't want to spoil anything for anyone...it didn't ruin the movie for me, but it belies a flaw in the premise of the movies that I think needs to be corrected. The movie was still too focused on Ethan Hunt, but the rest of the team was around enough that we know he couldn't carry out his own impossible mission without them. And no, I didn't think about him jumping on couches or fathering Suri or the whole creepy Tom-Kat thing during the entire movie. I did now and then, but not the entire time.

I liked it, my wife liked it. If Paramount is going to keep pushing these out every few years, and if "MI IV" is going to be as good as "MI III" was, I can't wait. Actually, I can wait. This is going to be a busy summer movie season--glad it got off to a good start.