Your mission should you choose to accept it...

So I went to the movies last weekend for the first time in a long while (you must understand I was a guy who used to go at least twice a month, now I am lucky if it is once every two months or so) and saw Mission: Impossible III. It was totally amazing, definitely the best movie going experience I have had in a long time. In the first 3 minutes the director managed to take a conversation and make it so tight, so tense that by the time the opening hits of the drum in the credits I was hooked, from a conversation! Not a bunch of stuff blowing up, not a major character being knocked off nothing like that. What is even more crazy is that the way in which it is done is sort of an old movie and television cliché: show a snippet from later in the film and then catch up to it, so you know what’s coming and anticipate how it all came about, and yet it had me riveted and to top it off I didn’t want to get there, I didn’t want what was happening to happen. Good stuff.
The action sequences were handled with skill, although I would expect this from JJ Abrams, who cut his teeth on series like Alias and Lost (and yes, Felicity but this is a slightly different genre). What made it a really great movie experience though is that, to me, it was obviously made by a huge movie geek who indulges himself a bit without it cutting to hard into the makeup of the movie. He put his friends in it. “Weiss” from Alias is in there, Keri Russell (who I understand was supposed to play Sidney Bristow at one point) finally gets to play a spy. Abrams kept everything super tight and if anything I found myself wanting more (there is one sequence in particular where Ethan has to break in and steal the “MacGuffin” – if you don’t know that term and consider yourself a movie buff you need to look it up – Abrams shows the break in, and the break out but skips the action inside. I want to see that action but at the same time I can’t deny that filming it the way he did ratcheted up the tension to a fever pace. Man, sooo good.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman is an amazing villain. I think it would be a disservice to say he just played him as cold. To me, he came across a guy who had done this kind of thing so many times that there was nothing that really phased him, nothing that really got to him. Ethan Hunt is just another in a long line of secret agents who makes the business deals a little tougher to manage. The entire movie the only reason you think Ethan will win, the ONLY reason is because of the fact that this is a franchise and you know they just wouldn’t kill the main guy, or would they? That was how my mind was the whole film. Very cool

Now you will notice I have stayed away from one area almost completely and I know you know what it is because it is the first thing you thought when you started reading this I bet and really it is my main point in writing this. Tom Cruise. Do you know that every, and I mean EVERY person I have told about seeing the movie has said, “I don’t know, Tom Cruise has really put me off lately.” And this is in light of the fact that the last two movies haven’t really been all that awesome. II was good but it really took place in a world where doves enjoy part time employment as dramatic slow-motion flyers, and motorcycles may as well be uni-motorcyles, oh and guns never ever run out of bullets unless the timing is there. But this is not what people are saying and I honestly don’t know if it is because of the media telling us this, or because we are actually making up our own mind. I admit I went because of the director and found myself surprised by the main actor. He is really good in this, he shows range of emotion, he shows depth, a good turn all around, and you can’t deny the guy throws himself into his work doing his own stunts and everything. But why does it matter if he acts more than a little weird in real life. He is an actor, are we saying that the others who get caught for drugs or cheating or car crashes or scandalous videos or whatever are any better. Hollywood is a messed up place for sure, but somehow creative storytelling is still flowing from there and every once in a while you get a cool movie that has somehow succeeded despite the producers and all the crap that is out there like “White Chicks” and the upcoming “Little Man”. I wouldn’t say I support Tom Cruise’s decisions as of late, or some of his behavior (yes, Oprah was kind of strange but love has made me feel the same way at times) and the whole thing with Katie and the baby (who I half expected to be Xenu incarnate from all the hype) but what does any of this have to do with Mission Impossible III? Nothing?
Cruise did not suddenly get weird, the hype machine suddenly turned it’s eyes on Scientology and is only now realizing something funny is going on here. Ironically it seems to be because Cruise is happy, Travolta is happy, they all seem so happy. Hollywood doesn’t do happy does it? Anyway, I should cut it off before this rant gets away from me. Do I care about Tom Cruise as a person? In the sense that I am a Pastor who believes that the Word could have a profound affect on him? Yes. In the sense that I am a moviegoer who goes not to see Tom Cruise but to watch a story unfold? No. And it was a good story well told. Go see it to watch Ethan Hunt, not Tom Cruise. Don’t let all the garbage that Hollywood tells us matters, matter. If you want a good story told well, MI:III will give you a summer movie buzz.