You won’t find any J.J. Abrams hate here, though. In the years since he directed M:i:III he’s become one of the most divisive auteurs out, but I’m old enough to remember when it was exciting that the guy who gave us Alias was making a big-budget spy thriller as his directorial debut. And yet, therein lies the problem. Especially compared to each film that came after it—but also the two that preceded it—M:i:III very rarely rises above feeling like a really good episode of TV.
The film actually has a lot of J.J. hallmarks that he field-tested on Alias and Lost first: a killer in media res opening, juxtaposing high-level-espionage with basic domesticity, a getaway where someone needs an adrenaline shot to escape, an emotional CPR scene that devolves into just wailing on someone’s chest, Michael Giacchino, etc. But everything around it just falls a little shy of flat. J.J. is also, famously, fascinated by process, and wringing drama out of getting from A to B, which doesn’t translate well here at all—upon actually seeing it played out, I don’t think I ever needed to see just how Ethan and the gang make face masks. And one of the film’s biggest action setpieces just involves Ethan running back and forth across a bridge to get a bigger gun, and jumping over a big hole. It’s easily the lamest, most anticlimactic action sequence across all seven movies.
Yes, Philip Seymour Hoffman somehow manages to make delivering cold-blooded lines as if he’s just deciding on a lunch order into one of the most inspired choices a film in this genre has ever seen. He also is in, like, four or five scenes. The rest of the supporting cast around Tom Cruise—minus the always-clutch Ving Rhames, of course, and the equally clutch introduction of Simon Pegg’s Benji—is much less engaging, including Jonathan Rhys Meh-yers and the great Laurence Fishburne wasting away in a cliche dickhead-boss role. (God bless Maggie Q for giving more than the script really asks of her.)
And with all due respect to Michelle Monaghan, once the shock of a domesticated Ethan wears off, the relationship between him and his fiancee Julia isn’t very compelling. She’s just there to be a damsel, underlined by the script’s very subtle move to have Hoffman’s Owen Davian immediately ask if Ethan has a significant other when he’s running through his list of threats. It was a relief to see the marriage immediately walked back in the next installment, and a pleasant surprise when her encore in Fallout actually turned out to be perfectly economical and solid. And while there’s genius, sometimes, in a plot that doesn’t overextend itself, the story in M:i:III is hilariously thin. J.J.’s right: it really doesn’t matter what the Rabbit’s Foot is, but go back and watch the big scene that tasks Pegg with giving it some weight beyond being a blatant MacGuffin and try not to chuckle.
But it looks like the Rabbit’s Foot will get an encore in Final Reckoning, as one of several callbacks in the new trailer (welcome back, Rolf Saxon as William Donloe, the poor guy who Ethan and co. got banished to Alaska all the way back in the De Palma original.) It’s sick that Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie found a way to weave a thread in what might be Cruise’s last go-round that stretches back through the entire series. But, personally, I’d be more excited for a Thandie Newton cameo instead.
