..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

WEEK THREE
Cruisin' for a Snoozin'

Summer starts with a whimper… perhaps the loudest whimper on record, but a whimper nonetheless… with Mission:Impossible 3, aka Alias: The Motion Picture, aka The Really Big Movie That Really Doesn't Suck That Bad.

The one thing that works better in this film than any of the others is the score, which combines original riffs by Michael Giacchino with a terrific feel for using the original them so the audience never feels like it's been forgotten or bastardized. In a very short career, Giacchino has become a master of range, managing the familiar and the surprising as well as any movie composer out there.

But I digress…

The first two Mission: Impossible movies suffered from plots that alternately seemed to have been taken out of a fortune cookie and pieced together with rubber cement and tape from a mistaken script shredding. However, both Brian DePalma and John Woo each offered no less than two completely memorable set pieces in the course of their efforts. No such luck here.

JJ Abrams has great ideas. The writing group of Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who worked together on Alias, has great ideas. But like Kurtzman and Orci's screenplay for The Island, there is a hyperactive overambition that devalues those ideas and turns them into a soup that is not as good as the sum of its parts. Moreover, Abrams doesn't have the directing skills to make something more of the script's weaknesses of ambition.

The simple analysis of Abrams directorial skills is that he shoots virtually everything in close-up, has no skill in establishing space (a TV director's trait because the density of the image in TV forgives this problem most of the time), and is only in his element when people are talking… and talking… and talking.

Here is a little more detail…

JJ Abrams has four tricks that he uses (a lot) in Mission:Impossible 3:

1. It's really hard for Tom Cruise to get into every building. (Everyone else on the I:M team seems to be able to get in through cleverness. Ethan Hunt has to use gadgets and raw physicality that turn him into Spider-Man.)

2. He can get tears to well up in Tom's eyes like they did in Puss-n-Boots in Shrek 2.

3. Lots of tough talk in tight close-up.

4. When it's time to leave an impregnable building, use lots of automatic weapons and be sure that only the outnumbered good guys will know how to shoot.

These four items will get you through pretty much all of Mission: Impossible 3.

Here are a couple little extra non-spoiler items to help you on your way through the M:I3 maze...

Phillip Seymour Hoffman was clearly not all that important to the movie - he was the McGuffin - until he became an Oscar candidate, then winner. I would bet a large sum that his last scene in the film was a re-shoot, though it may have been reshot during principle photography. Unlike in Capote, Hoffman is in his fully-fed glory here and the idea of him competing with Tom Terrific is appropriately avoided in most of the movie. When that changes, expect to hear some deserved laughs in the audience.

Pumping up Hoffman's part may have also lead to the worst choice for an opening for the film that I can imagine. For one thing, you've seen a cutdown of the scene if you've seen the trailer. Second, it is a flash forward and when we finally arrive at the actual scene, it replays itself almost exactly and there is no indication of any purpose in having it twice, other than if, a) The real opening sequence was a laughable dud (very possible, since it probably involved Keri Russell, who is beautiful and absolutely unbelievable in the film) and/or b) they really, really, really wanted to involve Hoffman before the 40 minute mark and this was the only way to do it.

The Laurence Fishburne/Billy Crudup near-subplot is junk taken right out of Walter Hill's circular file. If you can't figure out what's going on, you need to watch more TV… you're not even ready for movies.

The Impossible Mission support team has nothing to do in this movie, as was the case in the second film. Ving Rhames, collects a paycheck for being cool and sitting in small spaces. Jonathan Rhys Meyers has a lot of costume changes. And Maggie Q has great legs.

I was willing to suspend disbelief when jets attacked the bridge to the Florida Keys in True Lies. But the scene you have seen in ads, blowing up the bridge… it happens near Washington, D.C. and is done by government planes. It's 2006, kids. Pretending that 9/11 never happened is possible. But it makes you stupid.

Besides stealing from True Lies and many other movies, Abrams decides to steal from DePalma's M:I, which is not a clever enough choice to be ironic. Bad play.

The villain exit(s) on this film may be the worst I have ever seen in any action movie.

And of course, the whole movie is leading to Mission: Impossible 4, aka Mr & Mrs Smith: The Early Years. Oy.

All that said - and I believe every word firmly - the film isn't that horrible. It's just not that good. It will not be alone in being a mediocrity this summer. And God knows, there will be worse movies.

I like Cruise, though the moist eyed acting is not what he does best. Michelle Monaghan is a lot of fun, but is not used to her best effect here. Hoffman is given surface words and delivers a good, snarling performance (in his sleep) that in combination with his Oscar qualifies him as This Year's Duvall.

Picking Mr. Abrams to revive the Star Trek series (which needs no resurrection right now) makes sense. More TV. He is a TV director. And even the Star Trek movies were pretty much high-intensity TV episodes.

Is anyone, outside of Japan, going to pay to see this film a second time? Will critics, who are revved up for the start of the summer season, give the film a pass? Will anyone remember that the film existed as The Da Vinci Code and X-Men 3 come into focus?

The big question will be why Cruise didn't hire Dick Donner or Paul Greengrass or Ridley Scott or Tony Scott to make this movie. It's not rocket science. And, clearly, no one on this movie thought it was rocket science. So why not get the best craftsman-cum-artist - as he did twice before - to deliver those goods at least?

Truth is, the weaknesses of this film probably won't cost Paramount more than $100 million worldwide at the box office. The numbers move so fast that a massive opening will get you to 2.5 times opening almost every time. It could have been 3.5 times. And so it goes.

THE BOX OFFICE CHART
Week Two - 4/20
Week One - 4/13

THE COLUMN
Week One - 4/20
Week One - 4/13

- Email David Poland