Francine's Review - Mission Impossible: 3

I miss the days when I loved Tom Cruise. I really loved how cute and buff he was in MI2. Now, he’s just a bobble-headed caricature of himself. And, he’s really wound up… both on Oprah and in this film.

MI:3 has all the good stuff that you love about the IMF (Impossible Mission Force). They break into the Vatican, rescue the girl, speak any language they need to, have all the right costumes and gadgets (oh the gadgets!!). It’s everything you love when the music comes on “Dum, dum, dum-dum…Dum dum dummmdum.” The special effects are really good and they fit the movie perfectly. And there’s Phillip... and Kerri... and Ving.

Unfortunately, they all get a little bit of screen time and the rest is all Tom. It is, after all a “Cruise/somebody” production. It’s Tom looking tired, Tom all stressed out, Tom looking too short… Tom running gimpily, then running fast, then running REALLY fast and looking stressed out at the same time.

As a little aside, why do you think they cast Ving Rhames to work with Tom Cruise? They can never actually stand in the same scene together or Tom looks like one of the munchkins from OZ. I looked it up and, if IMDB is right, Ving is 6 feet (and not a little boy). Cruise is 5’7”. 5 inches on camera means that Tom looks at Ving’s clavicle, right??

That wasn’t as much of an aside as I thought, because Tom just seems smaller in this film. There are no fabulous buff shots. In one scene I actually thought “Tom runs like he’s getting old” and he’s too busy being frenetic to be charming. He doesn’t smile much. And when he does, you remember why you ever liked him. But, he smiles only a couple of times in the entire film and it made me stop and think, “He should smile more often.”

But, it is a movie, right? And not just a Tom fest (go with me on this one). So.. let's talk about the movie. The plot is a bit weak, you don’t really know why Ethan is getting all involved in the mess until they threaten his lady love, and then he’s (yup, you got it) all stressed out and running REALLY fast.

The twist is completely predictable. You know, where they point you to the double-crossing bad guy but it ends up being the guy next to him? Yup, Laurence Fishburne is our decoy (I forgot to mention him earlier) and he’s totally flat and unbelievable in his little bit of screen time. When the real bad guy pops up… I’m not the least bit surprised.

They were trying to add some relationship drama into the plot and I applaud that. Ethan is driven by his need to protect the woman he loves from the bad guys and from the loss of innocence that “knowing” about IMF will bring her. He’s trying to keep a bit of his world safe from IMF. He’s trying to have a life. It’s all in there. It's all really slow and boring. And at the end, the bad guys do get the girl for a while, she ends up shooting people to save herself, and Ethan has to tell her all about IMF. It’s a happy ending. Oh wait… he’s failed at ALL his goals. Hmmm… well, just believe me that it’s a happy ending. And when they do the relationship thing, remember Fred Savage and say, “skip the kissing.”