Mission Impossible: Third better than the second

The cast could have been smaller.
By CHRIS HEWITT
ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS
One scene in "Mission: Impossible III" takes place on board a helicopter that is: In pursuit of another aircraft, flying through a windmill farm and dodging missiles while, on board, a bomb is about to explode and one character is attempting to defibrillate another. This is a movie that knows how to multitask.
Not quite as good as the stylish first "Mission," but an improvement over the blunt, chaotic second one, this "Mission" doesn't stint on the big action scenes. In fact, there's an extended sequence set amid the wacky, colorful skyscrapers of Shanghai that sets the bar for this summer's explode-a-thons. But it balances those scenes with entertaining character detail, like the playfulness of Michelle Monaghan (the youngest abuse victim in "North Country") as the fianc & eacute;e of superspy Ethan Hunt and the wit of Philip Seymour Hoffman as a pitiless villain with the unflappable calm of a funeral director.
Plot? Well, you know: A weapons dealer (Hoffman) wants to dominate the world, and Hunt (Tom Cruise) wants to stop him. But writer/director J.J. Abrams draws on his experience as creator of TV's exceptional "Lost" to color between the lines. In "Mission," he reuses the technique (also a favorite on "Alias") in which characters talk about something intriguing that we know nothing about, so "Mission" begins with a scene that is out of chronology and that puzzles us with its references to an airplane and torture.
Some will be annoyed by that scene, but I think it's an elegant way for us to meet Hoffman a lot earlier than we would otherwise and for the film to disguise that it's mostly a series of setpieces and lively domestic scenes with Monaghan and Cruise, loosely connected by a doomsday scenario.
Knowing the fans
Abrams knows what "Mission" fans want, and he gives most of it to us. An amusing scene shows one of Cruise's masks being constructed, there's a "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego"-style romp through the world's capitals and even a reprise of Hunt's horizontal free-fall from the first "Mission" (this time, instead of doing it at CIA headquarters, he does it at the Vatican).
All that stuff is fun, and the only disappointment is that the size of the cast (including Laurence Fishburne, Ving Rhames and a give-us-more appearance by "Shaun of the Dead" co-creator Simon Pegg) defeats Abrams' attempt to differentiate the roles of the members of the "Impossible" team. If you know what Jonathan Rhys Meyers is up to, that makes one of you.
All of which suggests that when Billy Crudup -- oh yeah, he's in it, too -- says, "It's complicated," he's not kidding. But the appeal of "Mission: Impossible III," in which a bunch of people roam the world to break into buildings and make the occasional wisecrack? That's actually pretty simple.