Mission: Impossible 3

I watched the original Mission: Impossible series on tv when I was a kid. My favorite part of the show was at the beginning, where the leader of the Impossible Mission Force would take his special binder labeled "IMF" and carefully select the photos of the agents he wanted for the show's mission. The funny thing was, except for the occasional guest star, he always picked the same agents for every mission.

I remember usually the shows involved trying to get some information out of a guy. They would come up with some elaborate scheme to make the guy believe he was on a tropical island or in a foreign country. Once the IMF extracted the information then needed, they would pick up and leave. Their poor victim would then find out he wasn't on a tropical island or in foreign country, rather the whole thing was a setup and he was on some backlot in L.A.

For this latest installment of Mission: Impossible, I was glad that the movie finally involved some IMF teamwork, rather than Tom Cruise working solo. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of Tom Cruise solo action; he's running around this movie as fast as his short little legs will take him.

Run Forrest! Run!

For a while I thought that I wouldn't be able to truly enjoy this movie, because all I would see is crazy 'ol Tom Cruise with that big toothy grin of his. However, the good news is that this movie makes you forget he's insane in real life, and he doesn't flash his goofy grin until the end of the movie.

Mission: Impossible 3 is the first of the big summer blockbusters, and it certainly delivers on the big guns and blazing explosions, the prerequisites for any summer movie. I wouldn't say that this is the best in the franchise, although it will tide you over until the next big blockbuster comes out (X-Men: The Last Stand - 5/26! Wahoo!).

Luckily, there was a box nearby for Tom to stand on.