Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

I wasn’t expecting Mission: Impossible III to have deep characterisation, or a fascinating plot, so I wasn’t really disappointed in that regard.

However, I was expecting good action sequences, and for me a lot of them didn’t really work. The first one in particular – it was so dark, with so much happening, that I found it too confusing to really enjoy. And a lot of the others didn’t really do it for me either.

I think the other main problem was that it was just too much of a Tom Cruise vehicle. Yes, he can certainly still fill the screen with star presence. But a lot of the other characters felt as if they only had a page of dialogue (if that). And for the most part, it was pretty pedestrian dialogue. Maybe if there had been a few more (or any) clever one-liners, I would have had a better time.

I didn’t think it was an actively terrible film, but I didn’t find it all that good, either. Pretty forgettable, really. In terms of the “I can’t tell my wife what I really do for a living”, I’d take True Lies any day of the week over this one. And in terms of action-film-driven-by-a-MacGuffin, well, when we got home we re-watched Ronin on DVD. As well as guns and car chases, Ronin has Atmosphere and Clever Dialogue and Good Acting and an Equivocal Ending – all things that were notably absent from M:i:III.