The standard Hollywood blockbuster works – as we all know – to a formula with some fairly predictable rules. The formula runs roughly as follows: death-defying stunts + scintillating effects + alpha-male hero + innocent-yet-seductive love interest + the obligatory happy ending = box office dollars. Of course, many film critics dismiss blockbusters precisely because of this filmmaking-by-numbers approach. But this is to ignore the fact that, within the blockbuster genre itself, there is a huge spectrum of quality. When blockbusters are bad they’re truly terrible (think Broken Arrow), but when they’re good they are, put simple, great entertainment (think The Fugitive). M:I 2 was a bad blockbuster. M:I 3 is a great blockbuster.

In a reversal of fortune, the M:I franchise has transformed everything that was bad about the last film into everything that’s good about the new film. Remember the ludicrous latex face mask of M:I 2’s ending, when Tom Cruise swapped skins with his Aryan nemesis? Well, it reappears in M:I 3, but this time it’s introduced in such a subtle, seamless way that for one glorious moment our disbelief is thoroughly suspended. Remember Dougray Scott’s villain the last time around? He may have had the sulky, brooding looks, but he is trounced in the evil stakes by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s disturbingly ruthless badass – yet more kudos towards his growing reputation as the finest character-actor of his generation. Finally, M:I 2 faltered by ignoring (or forgetting) the original Mission Impossible ‘dreamteam’ scenario and aspiring to be a kind of ‘alternative Bond’ movie. In M:I 3, despite the inevitable pre-eminence of Cruise, the team is restored, the dependable assistance coming from franchise fixture Ving Rhames, newcomer Jonathan Rhys Meyers (of Match Point fame) and, surprisingly, British comedy hero Simon Pegg.

When I called M:I 3 ‘great’ I didn’t mean that it will leave a lasting impression beyond the end credits, or find a place in your Top 10 favourites list, or make you think about life differently in the ways that a truly great film can. On the contrary, MI:3 is hopelessly predictable, farcically unrealistic and grotesquely overblown. Yet these are the tenets of the blockbuster, and, within this familiar framework, M:I 3 is a very satisfying dose of entertainment. Despite the fact that two directors walked out before Lost’s JJ Abrams took over responsibility, despite the year-long delay in filming due to Cruise’s involvement in War of the Worlds, despite an ever-changing pre-production cast which at various points included everyone from Scarlett Johansson to Ricky Gervais; despite all this, M:I 3 is a triumph of mindless celluloid adrenalin.
(4/5)