Mission: Impossible III

Superspy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) returns for another adventure, embroiling his bride (Michelle Monaghan) in his battle of wits with an international arms black marketer (Philip Seymour Hoffman). The rating is strictly for fans of the series; if you didn’t like the first two, you won’t like this one any better. But for others, director J.J. Abrams and co-writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci deliver the goods, with a plot that’s (just barely) coherent enough to keep us watching, a neat cliffhanger opening scene and the usual array of to-hell-with-the-laws-of-physics action set-pieces. Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q round out Cruise’s team. Hoffman makes such a good villain that it’s a pity Abrams et al. couldn’t have given him more screen time; his role amounts to a glorified cameo.