Mission Impossible 3
  
Nonsense is the essence of the super spy genre, and J.J. Abrams, the third director to helm this action franchise (after Brian DePalma and John Woo), both acknowledges that fact and exploits it for all it's worth.
 
Abrams cut his teeth on television's Alias and Lost, not to mention Felicity (an all-but-unrecognizable Keri Russell shows up here, too). Abrams works from a tight, twisting script that never loses its rocket-speed forward motion (despite co-screenwriters, Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci) grounding the proceedings in the realistic (so far as that goes) bedrock of Impossible Mission Force hotshot Ethan Hunt's (Cruise) personal life.
 
As the film quickly reveals, Hunt has retired from fieldwork and is preparing to marry fiancée Julia (Monaghan), a nurse, and settle down a quiet life. She believes he spends his days working as a Virginia traffic controller, so when he's called back to action by his ex-boss (Crudup) and sent to rescue protegée Lindsey (Russell) from the clutches of evil arms dealer Owen Davian (Hoffman, considerably upping the ante on his long-running "I have a mouthful of mashed potatoes" vocal technique, to fine, creepy effect), she's unconcerned, or unwitting, or, and I think this is the most likely (having just been insta-married and consummated in a hospital supply room sequence that serves well to humanize the too-often robotic Hunt character), she's sore and just wants to go back to bed. Meanwhile, in Berlin/Shanghai/Wherever-James Bond-Isn't, Hunt and his trusty team are fighting enemies within the gates of the mission impossible team and Davian, who, flaunting a steely appearance Ian Fleming would've greatly appreciated, does tremendously bad things with the air of a man making out his shopping list. From thereon out it's kiss-kiss-bang-bang all over the place, but never with less than a full measure of chaos. Abrams, to his credit, has made what may be the best of the lot when it comes to these impossibly, totally over-the-top films. Unlike its predecesors, Mission Impossible III occasionally stops to catch its breath, hence the fascination with and fascinating depiction of Ethan Hunt's home life (who even surmised he might have one?) and these smallish downtimes serve to ratchet up the surrounding fireballs all the more.
 
Action connoisseurs will be amazed after at least two of the set-pieces here, one involving a game amidst a fluttery field of gargantuan windmills, and the other a smashingly well-edited battle between Hunt and the Bad Guys atop a doomed ocean going causeway. It's all Nonsense, of course, but it's done with such energy, forcefulness, narrative and visual flair that you (if you are somebody who usually goes for this type of thing) will care not a jot. Summer has arrived.
 
Paul Elliott