More than Mere Gadgetry

Like an animated Comet Catalogue, the Mission Impossible films give good gadgetry with the added attraction of dramatically conceived explosions and narrow escapes by a very lithe self-stunter Tom Cruise who, unlike Harrison Ford in the recent 'Firewall' appears not to have aged at all.

The acting is uniformly excellent, the MI3 team eased into their roles like workmates who know they can rely on one another and although Philip Seymour Hoffman could have appeared more often for my taste, he makes a very loathsome villain when he does.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has a fiancée this time out (Keri Russell) , and the film starts with his engagement party when all he gets to handle is a cocktail shaker, not only the first of many references to former Cruise roles but having an uncanny resemblance in shape and size to the main MacGuffin later on.

Everybody knows, a female love object gives the villains leverage and I have to agree with black sidekick Luther (Vick Rhames) that his and Ethan’s line of business is not compatible with permanent girlfriends. It’s not just the short notice disappearances and the subterfuges that will take the toll on the relationship. When Ethan tells his girlfriend at the engagement party that they’ve run out of ice so he’ll nip down to the nearest 7-eleven and we’ve just seen him throw out a whole bucketful, and he forgets to take some back, it looks like he’ll blow his cover before he even gets started.

Most of the gadgets in MI3 are on their second or even third outing, but this time they are accorded more respect. We watch the portable latex-mask maker, for instance, in operation, as it makes a doppelganger of the villain so he can be kidnapped from the vatican. In about 30 seconds it takes a photo of the subject, makes a 3D model on a kind of lathe cutter and then sprays on skin tone like the Picasso car add. All Ethan has to do to glue on ginger eyebrows and don a wig and he turns into Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The most useful gadget, of course, is the one that allows Ethan to drop down on a wire to within a foot or so of his target. He shoots the heavy magnetic end up to the top of the wall of the Vatican then allows his to walks up the wall and then sets the LED for the exact drop before letting himself down on the restricted access side. What I can never understand, though, is why he doesn’t break his back from the drop. Unlike a bungee, there is no elasticity in that line.

Ethan has supposedly given up active duty to instruct new squad members, for which he takes some ribbing, although he certainly disproves the old saying that those who can’t do teach. In fact, it’s because he is called upon to rescue his first trainee that he leaves the party. This naturally makes his fiancée nervous and to reassure her he marries her in one of the only truly indulgent scenes in the film. The impromptu ceremony in a hospital using key rings from the gift shop gratuitously reminds us that the star recently got married, although it also adds weight to to Ethan’s line later in the film, ‘They’ve captured my wife and they are going to kill her in two hours!’
The trailer highlight, the attack on the bridge with Ethan outrunning heating-seeking missiles shot from a helicopter is very well directed, and all the nicely contrasting locations are used to good purpose, although it can be disconcerting when the labels appear on the screen telling us, for instance, that Berlin is in Germany. Fair enough, Americans may have to see ‘Berlin, Germany’ to know it’s not some town in a US state. I know there’s a London in America, for instance, because it’s always coming up when I try to google the weather forecast, but do we really need to be told that Shanghai is in China?

The trip that Ethan makes to China to rescue his wife makes a fitting climax, when in a nod to the earlier films Ethan draws the outlines of Pudong skyscrapers on the window and then chalks up calculations to see how he can swing on his magic wire from the roof of one to the other to retrieve the sinister MacGuffin, or weapon of mass destruction, otherwise known as ‘rabbit’s foot’. He later demonstrates his fitness by sprinting a mile along the old Shanghai riverfront, dodging red lanterns and itinerant fruitsellers, in a bid to rescue his wife, now held by the escaped villain. It’s a hoary reminder that although gadgets have their place, they are no substitute for sheer physical prowess.




<Added>

Sorry, the director is J. J. Abrams I was thinking of '16 Blocks'

Did anyone else think the running sequence was speeded up?

And not nearly enough Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Sigh.

Sarah