In "
Mission: Impossible II" (2000), Ethan has to stop a villain who possesses a deadly virus: Twenty-four hours after exposure, you die. The heroine (
Thandie Newton) does, however, survive at the end of the movie, leaving her available for the sequel, although by "Mission: Impossible III," Ethan Hunt is engaged to a sweet nurse named Julia (
Michelle Monaghan), who thinks he is a highway traffic control engineer.
Helicopters are again involved, and Ethan falls for the old latex mask trick again, and even uses a latex mask himself, so that others can be fooled and he doesn't have to feel so bad. In a nice visual pun, the helicopters encounter giant energy-generating windmills in deserts near Berlin that uncannily resemble deserts near Palm Springs. It's kind of neat when one propeller slices off another, wouldn't you agree? Observing the curious landscape outside Berlin, I was reminded that Citizen Kane built his Xanadu "on the desert coasts of Florida."
Ethan Hunt's assignment in "M:I III" is to battle the villain Owen Davian (
Philip Seymour Hoffman) for control of the Rabbit's Foot. In Ethan's final words in the movie, after countless people have been blown up, shot, crushed and otherwise inconvenienced, he asks his boss Brassel (
Laurence Fishburne), "What is the Rabbit's Foot?" Ethan should know by now it is a MacGuffin, just like the virus and the computer file.
Why does Ethan risk his life and the lives of those he loves to pursue objectives he does not understand? The answer, of course, is that the real objective of all the "M:I" movies is to provide a clothesline for sensational action scenes. Nothing else matters, and explanatory dialogue would only slow things down. This formula worked satisfactorily in "M:I," directed by
Brian de Palma, and "M:I II," directed by
John Woo, and I suppose it works up to a point in "M:I III," directed by J.J. Abrams, if what you want is endless, nonstop high-tech action. Even the deadlines are speeded up this time. Instead of a 24-hour virus, we have an explosive capsule that detonates five minutes after it zips up your nose.
The action takes us to Berlin, Vatican City, Shanghai and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, although there seems to be no real reason to visit any of those places except to stage stunts involving their landmarks using computer-generated imagery. I did smile at a scene where Ethan parachutes from a building and ends up hanging upside down in his harness in front of a speeding truck. I liked a moment when he jabs a needle of adrenaline into a woman's heart to bring her out of her drugged stupor;
Quentin Tarantino should send him a bill. And there is the intriguing speech by an agency techie about the Anti-God Compound, a deadly byproduct of technological overachievement, which might simply destroy everything. If there is an "M:I IV," I recommend the Anti-God Compound as the MacGuffin.