Mission Impossible III is the first of the many movie in the summer blockbuster season. I would say it is a promising start... it's not spetacular but it lived up to its' hype.

Tom Cruise returns to the role of IMF Secret Agent Ethan Hunt. In this action-thriller-adventure, Hunt confronts an invisible international weapons dealer - Owen Davian (Academy Award winner Philip Seymour Hoffman). To add to the plot, he has to balance between work and his personal life which, has catatsrophic consequences when those two cross paths.

Firstly, the cast is very well assembled... very well balanced and suit their respective role. And with the storyline, the have seriously plenty to do. Altough I wish they would give the characters more depth... but then again, this is MI:III... it's all about Ethan Hunt.

It is interesting to note that the film is co-written and directed by J.J. Abrams... yup, that guy from Lost and Alias. You would notice that MI:III is a bigger budger version of Alias and Lost. Being a huge Alias and Lost fan, I noticed his style of action, character, comedy and drama is migrated to the big screen. I am not saying it's bad... but it seem so familiar and predictable. Nonetheless, it's a good effort by J.J. Abrams.

The scenes in MI:III bring you to the Berlin, the Vatican and Shanghai. Yeah... you can just imagine Sydney Bristow doing those things. Talkin' about Sydney Bristow, it is interesting to note that Cruise does his own stunts in MI:III. The action scenes were quite impressive and believable as well. One thing I can't accept is the fact Ethan Hunt can open any lock (under 5 secs) with almost anything he could get his hands on! hahaha..

Overall, an excellent start to the summer movie season and it's worth you time... you have drama, romance, action, and ok storyline. Too bad, the MI theme song is not as over-expose as John Woo's version. ooh... it has Maggie Q as well. heh heh

Ratings (Scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the highest)

Cast : 5
Sound : 3
Picture : 4
Storyline: 3

OVERALL : 3.75