Director: J.J. Abrams
Stars: Tom Cruise, Michelle Monaghan, Ving Rhames (Full Cast)
Studio: Paramount Pictures

The Plot: Newly married, semi-retired secret agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is once again dispatched by the IMF; this time, he confronts a ruthless arms dealer (Hoffman) who will stop at nothing to obtain a mysterious, deadly object.

Review by James Berardinelli

Mission: Impossible III provides lots of action, but too little excitement. It generates lots of pyrotechnics, but too little heat. And it offers lots of Tom Cruise, but too little Ethan Hunt. In short, if you're yearning for a flashy, leave-your-brain-at-the-door summer movie that never does anything interesting or challenging, Mission: Impossible III has what you're looking for. It's loud, raucous, frenetic, and blows things up real good. But it's testosterone without adrenaline, danger without suspense. 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.  more.. 

Review by MANOHLA DARGIS

IT would be a stretch to say that Tom Cruise needs a hit. What this guy needs is an intervention, someone who can help the star once known as Tom Terrific return to the glory days, when the only things most of us really knew about him came from the boilerplate continually recycled in glossy magazines, sealing him in a bubble of blandness and mystery. In those days, we didn't know that inside the world's biggest movie draw lurked a reckless couch-jumper and heartless amateur pharmacologist. All we saw was a billion-dollar smile and a performer who risked life and limb, everything but his own true self, for our movie-going pleasure. more.. 

Review by Stephanie Zacharek

Tom Cruise, reactive but impermeable, has spent his whole career learning how to make faces, mastering the semaphore of sensitivity. But listening to his fellow actors in a scene -- or even just acknowledging their presence -- is still beyond him. In the opening sequence of "Mission: Impossible III," Cruise, as secret agent Ethan Hunt, has been drugged, beaten and handcuffed to a chair. Baddie Philip Seymour Hoffman has kidnapped Ethan's wife, Julia (Michelle Monaghan), and he wants Ethan to watch as he tortures her. As Hoffman coos and flutters around the terrified woman, Cruise squints, blinks and bucks. more..