[Yellow Jacket]

Mission: Impossible III- 3/5

Usually, when you get to the third entry in a series (or trilogy, depending on if it gets a fourth installment), the movies start to lack. There are a lot of examples. Such as American Wedding, Friday the 13th part 3, Night of the Demons 3, etc. Sure, they don't always ruin the series (look at part 3 in the Friday the 13th franchise). But, this is where the movies start to lack anything new or interesting. I'm glad to say that this can not be said about MI3. Now, MI3 isn't the greatest movie ever made. Nor did it have the intention of being that. All it tried to accomplish is to entertain it's audience. And it did that. Well, somewhat. Sure, the film didn't do what I thought it would do, that being gunshots and explosions for pretty much 2 hours straight (the film clocks in at 2 hours and 6 minutes). It did what action flicks should do. Have gunshots and explosions and what not, but still have a storyline so the action doesn't feel repetitive or redundant. You also have to have a good storyline (which MI3's storyline was only sub-par), or you'll just bore the hell out of your audience. I did like the use of the supporting roles in the film, but not all of them were used to the fullest. A fine as wine example would be Philip Seymour Hoffman. He plays Owen Davian, the main villian in the film (obviously). But, he wasn't used that much. He only appeared to either piss off Ethan Hunt or be apart of one of IMF's dangerous and, at times, tacky plans (such as when they make a mask of Davian and have Hunt where it to knock out Davian, retrieve his voice, then pretend to be him). Which leaves me with two unanswered questions: Why would you only use your main villian for such a limited amount of time and why would you only use and Academy-Award winning actor for such a limited amount of time? Well, I doubt I'll get an answer to these questions. I did like Simon Pegg's (he played Shaun in Shaun of the Dead) cameo as Benji Dunn, one of the workers at IMF (I think, but am not totally sure, that he is a scientist). That's a real treat to any horror fan or fan of Shaun of the Dead. Overall, MI3 was an enjoyable, but exceptional, sequel that slightly surpassed MI2.