Movie review: "M:I:3"

On Friday we went to go see Tom Cruise's new movie, "Mission: Impossible: III: Die Hard with a: Vengeance." It was fantastic. I left the movie in such a good mood.

Given the events of the last year and a half, I went into the theatre completely braced for an unrelenting barrage of the Tom-Cruisiness of it all. And it was there: the bizarre intensity, the permanently clenched jaw muscle, the robot-like competence that allows him to jump off buildings, perform his own medical operations, sprint down the alleys of China like a freaking cyborg, etc. I never really bought into the fiction of the story, but it was a fun ride, and all the more ludicrous for Tom's real-life antics, the ones that fictional ol' "Ethan Hunt" is not quite equipped to handle (see couch-jumping, placenta-snacking, etc). Yet the context of real life really added to the movie. I would sit there and think, "Wow, Tom Cruise's wife looks like his real-life wife, Katie Holmes, the girl who used to be attractive before Tom cut all her synapses in half," or, "Hey, for a Scientologist, Tom Cruise is pretty handy with a difribillator."

The story of the movie was a pretty solid cat-and-mouse thing, with some good-looking women and exotic locales. Of course the end of the movie was a standard mess of betrayals and double-crossings, and I'm not quite sure who was a bad guy, how bad they were, etc, but I'm not there to diagram the thing, I'm there to binge on popcorn and laugh at the wooden exposition. But, there were some unexpectedly awesome action sequences, and the movie took a few more risks than I was expecting. It was edgy in a cool way, and JJ Abrams knows how to weave an air-tight narrative. And I loved Philip Seymour Hoffman playing a total slouchy badass. Ever since the movie I've been trying to imitate saying his lines: "I'm going to kill her in front of you" (insufferable tight-lipped grin, head tilt, slight nod) "and then I'm going to kill you." Or something. It was like "kill you behind her, and when he comes back, then I'm going to kill him astride them both, and then kill them both, sequentially" or something like that. He was a really bad guy.

Anyways, the movie is awesome. If you've ever been a 12 year-old male, or been involved with one, you'll love it.