Mission: Impossible III

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Yes, it's fundamentally business as usual, but it's the best kind of business as usual, and it finds everyone working in top form. Abrams imports and enlarges "Alias'" smooth, stylish, yet remarkably visceral approach to action, and the actors pack a satisfying amount of drama into the moments between action scenes.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A gratifyingly clever, booby-trapped thriller that has enough fun and imagination and dash to more than justify its existence.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

It's an expertly engineered popcorn movie - hold the butter substitute - but it also tries (and fails) to be a love story for the ages.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It's all poppycock, of course, but it's done with such vim and vigor and both narrative and visual flair that you care not a jot. Summer has arrived.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Against sizable odds -- a sense that the franchise is played out and its star over-exposed -- Mission: Impossible III delivers.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The supporting cast, including Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne and gorgeous Maggie Q, is underused, but the movie delivers the goods.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Bury the nostalgia. Like the rap twist Kayne West puts into the film's classic theme, this movie is best when it stirs it up.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

In Mission: Impossible III, we find out whether it's still possible to look at Tom Cruise and not see a weirdo. The answer is yes, but a complicated yes, because it takes time.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The end result is the very definition of a summer movie: breezy, undemanding and a carefully balanced blend of the familiar and the not-quite-what-you-expected.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It's overwrought and overplotted, but it's plenty of fun.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Big and fast and silly, but it's never dumb, and it's certainly never boring, either. The summer movie onslaught has begun on a high note.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Unlike the previous two films in this series, Abrams is more concerned with his hero's heart than with his hardware. The result is a pulse-racing thriller that restores the human factor to the franchise, and to its producer-star.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Though Abrams doesn't possess a fraction of the visual pizzazz of the two previous MI directors, Brian De Palma or John Woo, his incarnation is, from a narrative perspective, better made.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

In the world of bloated movie-star vehicles, it's not unusual to see an ego trip of these dimensions. What’s rare is when one hits its marks so smoothly.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Abrams keeps the action clicking along in 5/8 time, and Cruise is at his scowling/smiling best as he jumps, shoots and leaves. (See Tom run! Run, Tom, run!) Best is Philip Seymour Hoffman as the baddie; the film's best sequence features him playing Cruise playing him at a swank party in Vatican City.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The summer's first action epic does exactly what it's supposed to do, more clearly than "M:i:I," and more likeably than "M:i:II."

The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden

In his feature debut, "Lost" creator J.J. Abrams, who got the job on the basis of "Alias," takes the driver's seat with both feet on the accelerator.

Variety Todd McCarthy

For all its far-fetched formulations, this new entry maintains more of a dramatic throughline and has the bonus of a villain played with unsparing meanness by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Cruise is probably the most graceful physical performer to occupy the screen since Burt Lancaster, and in this sort of action role, he's just about peerless...He may not be a great actor, but to find a greater movie star would be a nigh impossible mission.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Hoffman is so proficient in this role that he just about overmatches Cruise and makes the wait until he speaks again in the second half of the film hard to endure with any patience.

Time Richard Corliss

M:i:III accomplishes its mission: to run smart variations on dumb tropes. After all, summer movies are not for students but for thrill consumers. Devour and enjoy.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A film that climaxes in Shanghai shouldn't go down like a meal in Shanghai. But an hour after you see M:i:III, you may be hungry for a real movie.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Only theoretically, though, is this exciting. Mostly, it all feels like a lateral move that keeps alive a franchise without breaking new ground.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Maybe it's foolish to be disappointed by a pure popcorn movie, but as I walked out of this film, I felt it had failed in its mission of pure entertainment.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

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.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

One of Cruise's most deeply cherished ambitions is to be a great actor, and this movie goes to great lengths to let him do that--sort of. You'll understand what I mean during the sequence in which there is more than one Philip Seymour Hoffman on the screen.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Though dated and unsophisticated compared to the much cooler Bourne spy thrillers, M:i:III will probably hit the sweet spot at the box-office - and give Cruise a whole new reason to start jumping on couches.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Mission: Impossible III hasn't the kinks or the oddball Continental chic of the first "Mission: Impossible," but it's less pretentious and obsessively pretty than the second movie.

Empire Ian Nathan

An inspired middle-hour pumped by some solid action gives you an idea how good the franchise could be, but we now live in a post-Bourne, recalibrated-Bond universe, where Ethan Hunt looks a bit lost.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

M:i:III, like many blockbusters, would be nothing without its star.

Slate Michael Agger

The movie raises your pulse, it has visual wow. But I suspect that audiences will emerge into the light feeling more battered than entertained.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Producer-star Tom Cruise handed this one to alumni from the TV spy drama "Alias," and the result is nearly as good as the series' best, Woo's Mission: Impossible 2.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

While all the "Mission" plots are convoluted and slightly preposterous -- the keyword in the title is "Impossible" -- the latest is just this side of insultingly stupid. The longer you think about it, the less sense it all makes.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Absent the real sense of creepiness and highly honed film craft of De Palma, or the strong visual and emotional sensibility of Woo, M: I III feels like one of the more forgettable James Bond films -- saddled, moreover, with a star who's sliding into self-parody.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Clearly designed to be an action thriller with emotional underpinnings. But you can't get blood from a stone, no matter how hard you squeeze. And so Cruise, a huge box-office star, is the single bright, blinking emblem of the failure of Mission: Impossible III.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Mr. Hoffman enlivens Mission: Impossible III, which otherwise droops, done in both by the maudlin romance and by Mr. Abrams's inability to adapt his small-screen talent -- evident in his capacity as the television auteur behind "Alias" and "Lost" -- to a larger canvas.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Watching this movie is like sitting on your couch for two hours to catch a little network prime time: you may be mildly entertained, but damned if you’ll remember any of it five minutes later. On the plus side, you probably won’t care.

Dallas Observer Rob Nelson

Aside from a single jazzy image of Hunt taking a nosedive off a Shanghai skyscraper, Abrams' movie is too oppressive, too enamored of its brutality to deliver anything like real thrills; its deeply unpleasant tone nearly makes you long even for Woo's cartoon absurdities.