The IMF has a serious human-resources problem. Over the course of three Mission: Impossible films, at least one person involved in each nefarious plot to destroy the world has been an employee of the agency that ostensibly represents the good guys. At some point, you have to wonder if square-jawed Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is the only honest man left in the spy game.
In the six years since we last saw him (in John Woo's Mission: Impossible II), Ethan has apparently been taking it easy, retiring from active duty to train new IMF (Impossible Missions Force) agents and getting engaged to a pretty nurse named Julia (Michelle Monaghan, in a thankless role), who thinks he works for the Department of Transportation. When one of those trainees goes missing, Ethan heads back out into the field, teaming up with his old buddy Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames, the only other actor returning from the previous films), plus new agents Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Zhen (Maggie Q). They're up against slimy arms dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who's easily the most evil and most intriguing of the series' villains.
The plot of M:I III is no more or less nonsensical than the plots of the first two movies, although it shares many of its nonsensical elements with the TV show Alias, created by J.J. Abrams, this film's director and co-writer (the other writers are veterans of Alias, as well). From the opening flash-forward to the emphasis on personal relationships amid the chaos of spy work, M:I III often plays like Alias: The Tom Cruise Years. The problem is that while Abrams (who also co-created Lost and Felicity) is very good at the small, personal moments, that's not what a film like this calls for, and without the luxury of a season's worth of TV episodes to build his relationships, a lot of the emotions come across as false.
In pairing Cruise with Monaghan, Abrams is domesticating Ethan Hunt, which makes about as much sense as domesticating James Bond. Julia is a downright dull character, a beatific nurse with no apparent flaws who clashes alarmingly with the band of rogues that Ethan surrounds himself with. Monaghan was playful and sexy in last year's Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, but here she's little more than a damsel in distress. Cruise had far more chemistry with Thandie Newton in the second installment, and it helped that her character was a master thief, which gave their courtship more of an edge.
Action-wise, M:I III is more successful, and Abrams, directing his first feature, sets up some wonderful sequences, including an eye-popping bridge battle featuring massive explosions. He throws in the requisite scenes of people pulling off face masks and Cruise dangling precariously over things, and even if the film suffers from the prevailing blockbuster ailment of being a half-hour too long, it's rarely dull when the chase is on.
One of Abrams' greatest strengths has always been casting, and he gets strong actors in all his major parts, including Billy Crudup and Laurence Fishburne as IMF officials, and Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg as a tech geek. Hoffman laps up his chance to play a big-time bad guy and Cruise, whatever you think of his off-screen antics, was born to play the action hero. When Ethan is cool and determined to kick some ass, he's fascinating, but when he's rhapsodizing about true love, he's kind of a bore. "Is this real?" Julia asks him at one point during a crisis in their relationship. Yeah, a little too real.