Forget all his nutty behaviour off screen. When the cameras start to roll on a big action movie, Tom Cruise can still deliver the goods.
With Mission: Impossible III he delivers big-time, largely because he has J. J. Abrams, the creator of TV's Alias and Lost, in the director's chair.
Abrams knows how to stage an action sequence and he gives Cruise five particularly heart-pounding ones in M:I3.
There's a sequence on a bridge involving helicopters, planes, vans and cars that is almost as exhausting for the audience as for Cruise and the gang.
Cruise ends up jumping across a portion of the bridge that has been blown away.
Even the cliche of having him almost miss and hang by his fingers is exceptionally taut.
Then there's a rather clever and fun escapade at the Vatican that recalls the kind of witty humour and improbable mistaken identities, wardrobe changes and last-second switches that defined the original '60s TV show.
The Vatican romp is a fun set piece that works well because the other assignments are so tense and life-threatening.
The body count is high in M:I3, claiming a couple of the film's bigger-name guest stars.
The thing that works for Cruise is that, even at 43, he looks as if he could execute these outrageous stunts, such as sliding down the glass front of a building in Shanghai.
Boy, can Cruise run -- and that's what he ends up doing in every action sequence.
Cruise is blessed with a strong supporting cast, especially Philip Seymour Hoffman as a unconscionable international arms dealer.
Fresh from his astonishing Oscar turn in Capote, Hoffman makes a superb villain. He is so mean, reprehensible and vicious that you can hardly wait until Cruise and he have their final showdown.
It's a beauty.
All Hoffman's scenes with Cruise are electric, especially the one that opens the film and replays near the end.
Ving Rhames and Laurence Fishburne supply the essential comic relief in the film.
They have some great one-liners that they deliver with aplomb, while still retaining their tough-guy personas.
As Cruise's immediate superior, Billy Crudup is suitably enigmatic, which helps with the mystery part of M:I3.
Sadly, the stunningly beautiful Maggie Q is under-used. She should be much more than window dressing for the Vatican sequence.
The thing that doesn't work in M:I3 is the romance between Cruise and Michelle Monaghan.
Not only is there limited chemistry, but their scenes together keep pulling us away from the far more involving and invigorating action sequences.
The romance subplot also turns Cruise into the spy who cries.
Whether they are tears of joy or tears of sorrow, they're jarringly insincere.
It's obvious Cruise is aiming to be the sensitive spy, but he comes perilously close to being a wimp.
All the cliches apply to M:I3 in the best possible way.
To say it is an adrenaline rush and an eye-popping, action-fuelled roller-coaster ride is to say Cruise and Abrams have delivered exactly what audiences demand from a summer popcorn flick.
It sets high standards, not only for the rest of the films that will be rolling out this summer, but for the next Bond and Bourne films, too.
(This film is rated PG)
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