This instalment, the third movie, in the Mission Impossible series is better than Mission Impossible II although it has to be said that this is not that difficult as far as I am concerned. The movie is more balanced in pace and the stunts and action scenes are not so totally over the top and ludicrous as in the second half of Mission Impossible II. Having said that there are still lots of pretty outrageous action stunts. This movie also has a real bad-ass villain that would not have been out of place in a classical James Bond movie.

The plot is as uninspired as one can expect from a Hollywood action movie. Hero crosses bad guys path and acquires something that the bad guy wants. Bad guy gets pissed off and grabs good guys wife to force him to get the stuff the bad guy wants. Big show-down at the end and bad guy bites the dust. Throw in a traitor in the mix just to mess things up at regular intervals. Nothing to write home about in other words.

The entertainment value of this film, as of the two previous ones, comes entirely from the various, more or less contrived, stunts, tricks and action sequences in the movie. As one can assume from the movies budget the film delivers well in these areas.

What I find annoying is that Ethan, again, finds himself alone and without support from the IMF team as well as having to deal with a traitor within. I find that kind of stuff tiresome to say the least. While I am in ranting mode I can also say that the silly idea of “dying” and then getting kick-started again, especially given that the time between “dying” and being kick-started again suffered from the usual lack of the concept of actual time elapsed so often being shown by Hollywood directors, was pretty silly.

As I wrote, it is a decent enough action movie but I would really like to see a “true” Mission Impossible movie where the team gets a mission and executes it with the full force of IMF behind them.