Cinematical

At the start of one scene in Mission: Impossible III, Tom Cruise's super-spy Ethan Hunt is on one side of a sixty-foot wall, dressed as a delivery man; about sixty seconds later -- including brief pauses to activate the grappling gun and confuse the security cameras -- he's on the ground on the other side, dressed as a priest. If this kind of derring-do -- globe-trotting escapades involving tricky tasks performed with panache in the face of mortal danger -- has any appeal for you, then you're going to like Mission: Impossible III. Cruise hand-picked director J.J. Abrams, who makes his big-screen directing debut here as the third directorial choice for a sequel that's been in the making since 2000, featuring one of the biggest stars in the world as lead actor and producer -- so, no pressure there.

But I say 'like' above, not 'love,' because while it's a really well-made piece of summertime action film making, it lacks a few things whose presence would have elevated it to true greatness. After a hero-in-peril pre-credit sequence, Mission: Impossible III flashes back a few days: Ethan's having a party alongside his fiancée Julia (Michelle Monaghan), and all her friends are taken with him: Ethan seems cute enough, even if his job with the Department of Transportation seems really dull … Ethan, it seems, hasn't told Julia he's with the Impossible Missions Force; he's not doing fieldwork anymore, just training the next generation, but he's out. And then the phone rings …

… Because one of Ethan's top students, Lindsey (Keri Russell) has been captured, on an assignment to track arms dealer Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman); as Ethan's boss John Musgrave (Billy Crudup) explains, normally the agency would 'disavow' her, but Davian's too big a target to give up. Ethan assembles a team to get Lindsey … and finds out that Davian's got his hands on a big-money bad, bad, technology only known as the "Rabbit's Foot."

So the film is, essentially, a series of action pieces: Rescue Lindsey, kidnap Davian, lose Davian, find the Rabbit's Foot, big finish. And make no mistake: They're well-made action sequences. Abrams hired smart for M:I III, including bringing Vic Armstrong on as the action director and second unit director. Armstrong's not exactly a household name -- not unless you live in the Spielberg household, anyhow -- but he's crafted stunts and action sequences on some of your favorite films: With seven Bond films, all three Indiana Jones movies, three Superman films and Return of the Jedi listed among his credits, Armstrong's resume alone makes you crave popcorn. There's plenty of run-and-gun fun in M:I III, with plenty of explosions and nail-biting ohmigod! scrapes and escapes.

Abrams also chose to explore Ethan Hunt's inner life with this film, especially in his relationship with Julia. This allows Cruise to revisit territory he's mined before in films like Jerry Maguire -- the loving man who doesn't doubt his love, only himself. Admittedly, Jerry Maguire was more worried about losing his job than bio-terror, but it works well enough, even if Cruise's scenes with Monaghan make the film feel just a little poky.

So you have big, brawny action-movie muscle; you have a softly-lit glowing skin of romance and sensitivity as well; what M:I III lacks is the connective tissue that a great action thriller has -- the seemingly-simple scenes that lay out the players, the stakes, the reasons why everybody's chasing the great whatsit, and fleshes out all the characters who might be the traitor on the inside so that they all serve as suspects and the ultimate revelation of betrayal truly matters. Screenwriting team Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Abrams gets writing credit as well) probably worried that too much explanation and exposition might slow the movie down and sap its energy, but they maybe didn't quite grasp that, when done well, all that stuff can actually enhance tension and suspense, mixing a little moral and emotional shading in to contrast with the bright lights of the muzzle flashes and explosions.

M:I III also feels a little over-stuffed: There's Cruse and Monaghan's relationship, Hoffman's villainy, Cruise's team (including Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Maggie Q), the Impossible Missions Force honchos (Laurence Fishburne, Crudup) and worker bees (Simon Pegg, in two brief, brisk scenes that the Shaun of the Dead star gives a much-needed jolt off of the tracks the techno-nerd scenes usually run on).  The actors are all either delivering what they consistently do (Cruise, Rhames, Fishburne) or working a little outside of their usual comfort zone and surprising us. Hoffman's Davian is a cold, brutish bastard -- richer than God and convinced he's untouchable. (In one of the film's snappiest lines, Fishburne explains that Hoffman's bad guy is " … an invisible man; Welles, not Ellison, if you want to get cute.") Hoffman doesn't just deliver sneers and smirks and glowers, though; there's a mano-y-mano fistfight between Cruise and Hoffman, and between the script's set-up of the circumstances for the fight and Hoffman's explosive, physical brutality, you actually believe the scene.

Mission: Impossible III is certainly far better than you'd expect any movie based on a four-decade old TV show to be, especially a movie with a Roman numeral in the title. It's also not quite as good as it could be, either. (I know this may sound like heresy to many action film fans, but I think I liked Mission: Impossible II better than III -- it may have been muddled and overly complicated, but it had that great John Woo energy all through it, and the script covered everything you needed to know to truly feel engaged in the film.) Mission: Impossible III doesn't self-destruct, but if there is a Mission: Impossible IV (and given Cruise's go-getter joi de vivre, there may very well be), let's hope it gives us less of Ethan Hunt's happiness at home and more of his colleagues and challenges on the job.