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'Mission: Impossible III': A fun summer movie

All of the cluttered pyrotechnics of Brian De Palma's first "Mission: Impossible" and the florid slo-mo tangos of John Woo's camp masterpiece "Mission: Impossible II" have been sandblasted away in "Mission: Impossible III," a sleek, punchy thing that glides with a professional efficiency verging on the ho-hum. It's fun. It's stupid. It thrusts you against your seat, knotted, wired. There is lots of fire.

But for all its noble attempts to balance action crunch with character finesse, little of it sticks. No matter how many times Tom Cruise chokes back tears (I counted five), his secret agent Ethan Hunt can't shake his sculpted fakeness and cartoonish invincibility. Why worry about a guy who can't die? This isn't a man, it's a comic book character.

Paramount Pictures 'Mission: Impossible III' 3 out of 5 stars The verdict: It's all here: action, explosions, bad guys. Just don't look for character development. Director: J.J. Abrams Starring: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Billy Crudup, Michelle Monaghan Run time: 126 minutes Release date: May 5, 2006 Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of frenetic violence and menace, disturbing images and some sensuality. See showtimes Sneak peek! Preview the "Misson: Impossible III" action with these stills from the movie. Mission: Comparables Atlanta Journal-Constitution film critic Bob Longino compares all three MI movies side-by-side. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Mission: Impossible III'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

First-time feature director J.J. Abrams — creator of television's "Felicity," "Alias" and the hit "Lost" — knows action. He also knows character. And he's terrific at both. If his modest visual flair betrays his television roots — it's no-frills, old-school, down and dirty — his instinct for character hints at the accomplished writing of TV's present golden age.

There's not much Abrams can do with Cruise's established Hunt, though. To give him soul, Abrams relies on the standby of the girlfriend/wife in peril. It's a moldy contrivance to swell up the hero's resolve, show he really cares, that he can sob with the best of them.

Hunt has several missions in this "Impossible" (all of them, by the way, totally impossible), but it's the one to rescue his new bride (cat-eyed Michelle Monaghan) from the clammy grip of the villain (Philip Seymour Hoffman) that has his heart pounding to the movie's groovy theme song.

Abrams' most original stroke is almost radical. He upends the opening scene, traditionally a bombastic, James Bondian set piece that electrifies viewers. "M:I:3" begins with a gun pressed to the head of Hunt's wife and a bloodied, crying Hunt pleading for her life, a scene that will be returned to and completed near film's end. It's a shocking downer that throws you for a loop.

As always, the story is swirly with vague forces of evil, high-tech razzle, plot twists and backflips, bullets, explosions, rubber masks and brazen swaths of absurdity. With reckless glee "M:I 3" defies every law of science, from gravity and physics to the godlike pearliness of Cruise's resplendent choppers, which he actually uses on Billy Crudup's hand.

After a failed attempt to save a fellow agent and protégé ("Felicity" star Keri Russell), guilt, anger and ego drive Hunt to take down Hoffman's Owen Davian, whose sinister impulses are never made clear, leaving him a rather glaring cipher. (What's a "Mission: Impossible" movie without a splash of incoherence?)

Shedding his squeaky-toy Truman Capote and regaining his sluggish baritone and panda bear carriage, Hoffman cuts a strange villain, a mixture of normalcy and purring ickiness. Davian is strictly professional and has no time for cackles, leisure sadism and other villainous tics. His are a blithe malevolence and lazy disgust. Hunt is a boring nuisance to him, easily swatted away.

And he knows Hunt's soft spot. Abducting his wife, he demands Hunt bring him the prize of world destruction, a device called the Rabbit's Foot, a classic MacGuffin about which we learn almost nothing, except that — current events alert — it will go to the Middle East, cause the United States to get involved in nation-building and spread democracy. One line of dialogue takes care of all that information.

Abrams plays up the husband-wife stuff, and you can't blame him. He wants to fill the hollow tin chest of the previous "M:I's" with a heart, and if his efforts weren't so obvious we might invest in it. During breaks in the action, Hunt's righteousness inflates, his teeth grit, fists clench as he determines to save his wife, whose marginal role is strictly a device.

Hunt's character is defined by how many times he tears up. (Cruise is good at this, but it's about as deep as this transparent actor goes.) When he thinks of his wife, Hunt gets gulpy, his lips pinch and his eyes look like juicy peeled fruits. Sometimes he quivers.

Then he bounds into action and all silliness breaks loose. There's a helicopter duel amid a sea of windmills — so many whooshing, slicing blades! — and a truly hair-raising missile attack on a commuter bridge in which SUVs cartwheel and Cruise is chased by the same fireball every action hero is obligated to run from.

But the best comes when Cruise and partner Ving Rhames create, before our eyes, a lookalike rubber mask of Hoffman. Cruise then slips it on and becomes Hoffman. It's so loony that you have to laugh, which is fine. Because as the film's plausibility strains and buckles under a wedding-cake stack of grandiloquent folly, you realize you're watching a comedy. Cruise, our slick suburban super spy, can weep all he wants. We'll keep laughing.