Mission: Impossible III

Paramount Pictures presents a J.J. Abrams film, starring Tom Cruise. Written by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Abrams. 126m. PG-13 for intense sequences of frenetic violence and menace, disturbing images and some sensuality.

3 stars

In the cinema, summer fun begins 45 days early with “Mission: Impossible III,” which contains all the high intensity thrills we’ve come to expect from the action franchise.

This series may be auteurism’s strongest argument, as each director has created a unique style to bolster a familiar plot. Just as Brian De Palma and John Woo stamped the two previous films with their personal trademarks, J.J. Abrams has treated “Mission: Impossible III” as an extended, $200 million episode of his television creation, “Alias.”

For fans of Abrams, who was also the creative genius behind “Lost,” this is not exactly a bad thing. For cinephiles, well, we’re now accustomed to big movies getting television-worthy direction.

The film’s pre-credits sequence is Abrams’s direct nod to his loyal “Alias” viewers. We’re dropped in medias res into a confrontation between our hero and his captor, with no discernible explanation for how we’ve arrived. Abrams often utilized this exact technique to manufacture suspense for “Alias,” which occasionally began with secret agents in peril before wedging in a “36 hours ago” intertitle and beginning properly.

Thanks to two previous “Mission: Impossible” films, an insatiable media blitz, and the occasional demonstration of trampoline technique on Oprah’s couch, we know why Tom Cruise is here. He’s IMF super-agent Ethan Hunt, who, in the film’s opening, finds himself handcuffed to a chair while a menacing villain named Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) points a loaded gun at what appears to be Hunt’s love interest.

Davian keeps demanding the “rabbit’s foot,” a device which is of no consequence to us the viewer, but of utmost importance to the central characters and is therefore a maguffin. What is interesting to us is how Hunt will extricate himself from this precarious position, as we’ve assumed by now that the super-agent is too handsomely paid to die at the hands of a stooge.

Before we move forward, we’re forced to go backwards. Hunt, we learn, provides combat training for novice IMF agents; he’s relinquished field work since his budding romance with Julia (Michelle Monaghan) began.

Despite his new station, he’s contacted by his handler, John Musgrave (Billy Crudup), for a spontaneous rescue mission of IMF agent Lindsey Ferris (Keri Russell, who starred in Abrams’s breakthrough television series, “Felicity.”) Since Hunt trained Ferris, he feels obligated to take the mission.

Of course, there are more complications than your ordinary snatch and grab. For one, IMF may be unintentionally stowing a traitor in its ranks, and preliminary signs point to Hunt’s section director, John Brassel (Laurence Fishburne). If you’ve seen either of the previous two films, you know the true villain is at least two good false faces and several bad accents away from being exposed.

A blockbuster like “Mission: Impossible III” will always attract high-profile talent, but the series continues to obsess on Hunt’s character singularly.

Ving Rhames reprises his role as Hunt’s field operations associate Luther Stickell, only to be subjugated to a couple of throwaway lines and plot machinations. Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays a green field agent named Declan, and Maggie Q, an alluring Polish-Vietnamese American who composes the field team’s eye candy, fare no better. Certainly, the original television series had more opportunity to provide dynamic characterizations to supporting actors, but the films don’t even bother.

While “Mission: Impossible” films have often employed frustrating fortune-cookie plots, Abrams manages to keep the action understandable. Audiences would exhibit little patience for De Palma’s fascination into the inner workings of espionage; in the decade since the first film, we’ve become increasingly obsessed with style over substance.

I unabashedly admit I’m the first person to giggle with unadulterated glee when Abrams orchestrates a blown bridge or a needlessly intricate kill shot. I come to “Mission: Impossible” films to watch Tom Cruise kick butt and take names; it would be foolish of me to try and hold it to a more rigorous standard.

“Mission: Impossible” films are a necessary facet of the mainstream spectrum. My main gripe with big-budget productions is that they routinely overshadow more understated films worth our attention. But that doesn’t negate their importance, especially to people who utilize the movie theater as a portal to escapism.

In the following weeks, we’re going to be offered a multitude of big explosions and fantastical characters. This year, I must say I’m looking forward to most of it.