saw: mission: impossible iii
While lacking the grace and economy of Brian De Palma's 1996 franchise outing, J.J. Abrams' contribution to the Impossible Mission canon is sturdy and competent enough not to beg comparison with John Woo's sloppy, florid 2000 entry. M:I:3 is essentially Alias on steroids, replete with an episodic rhythm that suggests commercial breaks but minus Jennifer Garner's unifying charisma. The set pieces are budgetarily spectacular; the emotional connective tissue, however tenuous, is nevertheless tedious. And incidentally, in case it isn't abundantly queer by now, Tom Cruise really cares about the ladies in his life, with whom he constantly has totally spontaneous, unchoreographed sex and who consistently get mixed up in his covert existence … as a spy. Got it? Good. The movie's biggest misfire is Philip Seymour Hoffman. As written, his heralded villainy is so vague and constricted by the demands of Cruise's star turn that he registers with scarcely an iota of the evil reputation that precedes him. He comes across as a churlish petty-psycopath, easily dispatched just in time for the penultimate sponsor identification. Grade: B