Mission Impossible III by Bruce Geller - Eight out of 10

Mission Impossible III by Bruce Geller

Eight out of 10

For this cinephile, whenever Tom Cruise is on the screen, the notions of Scientology, excess, aberration, madness come to mind and therefore the enjoyment of the film he stars in is severely diminished.

Evidently, it is wrong not just to think of what an actor does off set – for they do so many crazy, absurd, often repelling  things – but this also concerns real geniuses, like Tolstoy, Hemingway, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Ibsen, to name just a few of the best minds that ever lived.

We learn from the fabulous book Intellectuals, by Paul Johnson, that the aforementioned have done some ghastly, horrendous things in their life…for instance, Rousseau has abandoned his children – were they nine – in front of an orphanage, in an age when nine out of ten died under these circumstances.

Ethan Hunt – everybody knows who plays him – is in love with Julia aka the unconvincing, rather gauche Michelle Monaghan.

As usual though, he receives a call from Musgrave aka Billy Crudup and they meet, he gets the self-destructing message – a déjà vu – and he finds that the only pupil he has had as a trainee that he recommended for missions had been kidnapped in Germany and his help is needed.

He travels to Berlin, with the familiar Luther aka the one who always brings a dazzling note to the movies he plays in, Ving Rhames, Zhen aka Maggie Q and Declan aka Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

They shoot all the windows and the enemies as expected and they liberate the prisoner, Lindsey Farris.

Alas, she has in her brain a mini bomb and they cannot defuse it in time to ensure her survival.

The dead agent had sent a message to Hunt, in which she reveals the fact that she suspects Theodore Brassel aka Laurence Fishburne of treason.

The villain of the film, Owen Davian aka the late, exceptional Philip Seymour Hoffman, plans to make a transaction, involving a new weapon that could destroy, if not the earth, large parts of it.

This would take place at the Vatican, where the team performs the usual magic and some more, with every new film.

Tom Cruise can wear a mask now that makes him look exactly like the antihero and thus manage to take him away.

There are many turns and surprises – which we counterintuitively have come to expect – and the stunts are superb.

Cruise is famous for trying to jump, fall and do so much of the dangerous tricks himself, breaking legs in the process.

Even if captivated, it often feels like too much, and then it is a cliché that we know, even if it has a new face.

Overall, it could be satisfying, but not elating.