Mission: Implausible

Gotta run, it's sequel time! Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt in the J.J. Abrams film Mission: Impossible 3. Photo Stephen Vaughan/Paramount Pictures.

When it was announced that J.J. Abrams would direct the third instalment of the money-spinning Mission: Impossible franchise, fans of great storytelling rejoiced. After John Woo turned the second film into an overwrought ballet of ludicrous combat, it was clearly time to bring back some semblance of humanity. The creator of the critically lauded TV series Alias and Lost, Abrams seemed ideal — the writer-producer has a flair for sharp dialogue, authentic characters and ingenious storylines. He’s a populist, but an exceedingly clever one.

Abrams tries, as often as possible, to imbue Mission: Impossible 3 with his trademark humanism. Regrettably, those attempts are compromised by an unwieldy plot. After an illustrious career in international espionage, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) seems to have settled in to a 9-to-5 routine. While his work with the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) is still classified, Ethan’s got the superspy equivalent of a desk job: he’s training wannabe superspies. He’s also on the verge of getting hitched to Julia (Michelle Monaghan). M:I-3 would be mighty dull if this domestic bliss were allowed to go on for too long. During their engagement party, Ethan gets The Call: an IMF agent is being held and tortured in Berlin. Will Ethan help get her back?

Do you even have to ask?

Before long, Ethan and a crack team of IMF operatives — Luther (Ving Rhames), Decian (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and Zhen (Maggie Q.) — are carrying out an audacious mission to rescue the captured agent, a former protégé of Ethan’s named Lindsey (Felicity’s Keri Russell). An example of Abrams’s visual bravado, the scene moves from a bullet-laden seizure in a grotty warehouse to a helicopter chase through a Berlin wind farm. In the middle of this air fight, Ethan learns that Lindsey’s captors inserted a tiny bomb in her head — a sort of high-tech cyanide pill. While pilot Decian and his pursuer play chicken among the whirring turbines, Ethan fires up a defibrillator in order to defuse the bomb in Lindsey’s head. (Don’t think too hard about the science; it’ll ruin the fun.) Decian manages to shake off the enemy. Ethan has less success: the bomb goes off, thus sabotaging Keri Russell’s comeback.

From Oscar to this? Philip Seymour Hoffman tries to achieve liftoff in Mission: Impossible 3. Photo Steven Vaughan/Paramount Pictures.

The man behind Lindsey’s abduction was Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an international arms dealer. Lindsey was captured because she knew too much about “the rabbit’s foot,” the codename for an insidious (though undefined) biological weapon Davian is trying to acquire for resale on the black market. Instead of killing Davian and being done with it, the IMF team decide to kidnap him in the hopes of ensnaring his supplier, which would present a far bigger score for IMF. Davian is nabbed, with little incident, while visiting the Vatican. While driving over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on the eastern seaboard, the IMF convoy transporting Davian is waylaid by a terrifying air assault. It’s not clear who’s behind it; whoever it is, they manage to airlift Davian to safety. The ambush is harrowing, both in its staging and the ruthlessness it portrays.

At the outset, the prospect of seeing Hoffman play Tom Cruise’s villainous foil was rather exciting. But Hoffman’s character spends so much of the film in transit, the actor never gets a chance to cultivate evil; he’s a casualty of a bewildering plot. Eventually, Davian abducts Julia and gives Ethan an ultimatum: if he wants to see Julia alive, he must bring Davian the rabbit’s foot. Given Abrams’s abiding interest in geopolitics, I expected Hoffman to deliver at least one vitriolic monologue on the post-9/11 arms trade. But Abrams doesn’t allow his character to grandstand the way Bond villains do. Instead, Hoffman’s dialogue is reduced to a series of terse commands. While he gets a little splenetic towards the end, for most of the film, Davian seems less sadistic than mildly grumpy.

Hoffman isn’t the only squandered talent. Rhys-Meyers, so compelling in Match Point, is nothing more than hired help. The few lines he gets are filled with technical mumbo-jumbo. Maggie Q. says even less. As for Rhames, he’s left reprising his role from the first two films: playing Danny Glover to Cruise’s Mel Gibson.

Which leaves Cruise. The megastar could easily have sleepwalked through this actioner, but he makes the most out of Abrams’s attempts to humanize Ethan Hunt. There’s a scene in the early going where Julia asks her future husband pointed questions about his secret life. Cruise doesn’t resort to platitudes or tears; he simply trembles. Finally, Ethan acknowledges Julia’s concern with a simple request: “I need you to trust me.”

It’s a powerful Abrams moment, fraught with genuine emotion and untold complication. It’s a shame that for the rest of the film, Abrams the empathizer is upstaged by Abrams the plot strategist.

Mission: Impossible 3 opens May 5 across Canada.

Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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