Starring: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Billy Crudup
Director: J.J. Abrams
Rated: M
TOM Cruise is clearly in charge of Mission: Impossible III.
While J.J. Abrams makes a very impressive debut as a feature film director, Mr Cruise as executive producer, producer and star is the boss.
M:I3 is Tom’s other baby (after the birth of his new daughter Suri).
He works hard on the screen and is in almost every single scene in the film.
Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is engaged to Julia (Michelle Monaghan).
She doesn’t know that he works for the International Mission Force (IMF). His cover story is that he is an urban transport analyst.
Hunt is the best trainer of agents IMF has. When one of his finest students goes missing at the hands of arms dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Hunt returns to the front line to rescue her.
When she dies, he sets out to capture and kill Davian.
But Davian has powerful friends in high places, and soon Hunt is the hunted not the hunter.
M:I3 is a very classy action thriller. It should be too. With a reported budget of US$150 million, Tom Cruise can buy the best. And he has.
The cinematography, lighting, art direction, special effects, sets, locations, music score and editing are all from professionals on top of their craft.
The dialogue is surprisingly good, especially for an action film where absurd coincidences are presented with straight faces.
The acting is well above average for this genre as well.
It’s also true that M:I3 is quite violent. Not explicitly so, hence it has attracted only an M rating, but the atmosphere and implied violence is all pervasive, with most of it carried on the extremely loud soundtrack.
The main worry for Catholics in M:I3 is in the script.
Tom Cruise commissioned the screenplay from J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci after seeing this trio’s work on the TV series Alias.
In their script for M:I3 this unholy trinity of writers has the heroic Hunt and his fellow IMF agents abduct Mr Davian at a charity cocktail party within the Vatican City State.
Apart from the absurdity of such an occasion in the Holy See, where backless dresses with splits to the thighs and plunging necklines proliferate, Owen Davian is there to pick up a criminal intelligence drop-off, code named “anti-god”.
The implications inherent in this sequence of scenes is that the Vatican is, either, the unwitting stage upon which foreign weapons are bought and sold, or it is up to its neck in consorting with international arms dealers and terrorists.
Charity demands that we take the best possible interpretation, but given Mr Cruise’s power over this film, his former status as a Franciscan minor seminarian, and his devotion to Scientology, my charity is stretched.
It is worth noting that this gathering of international criminals is not occurring at the headquarters of Scientology.
M:I3 goes on to subtly expose Chinese organ harvesting, a corrupt IMF (with all the implications of this referring to the International Monetary Fund), an out of control Middle East and a despotic North Korea.
The Vatican is keeping some sinister company here.
While I am aware we are not meant to take anything about this film seriously, that’s impossible.
The subtle messages contained within the script are insidious and offensive, and the audience it reaches is impressionable.
M:I3 is filled with excellent thrills and spills, but its message of revenge, international espionage and corruption, using the Church as a supporting actor, makes our mission, while not impossible, just that bit more difficult.
