Here is my first review for the year...more coming later. Cheers. **Mission: Impossible 3** The first big blockbuster of the year came at the beginning of May with Mission: Impossible 3, a good deal earlier than usual. I have to admit, I was extremely nervous about this movie. All of the aggravating buzz about TomKat could have easily crippled this movie, especially since the actress playing Ethan Hunt's wife in the movie looks just like Katie Holmes. Well, thankfully, my doubts completely disappeared during the movie, because the explosive and clever plot, the surprisingly great acting, and the awesome action sequences make this one helluva ride. First off, although the first M:I movie was smart and original, the film seems out of date at best when watched today. The second M:I film was an utter disaster, ranking among the worst of the James Bond movies. The story was very off, the direction was plain wretched, and the acting was uninspired. The best thing the producers did straight away was enlist as the director the creator of one of the most intriguing series on television, Lost, who is none other than J.J. Abrams. The next excellent thing that was done was casting Philip Seymour Hoffman in the role of the villain. With a great director, the studio was now able to pen a decent screenplay, which turned out to be more than just decent, but great. The great editing of the movie presents itself in the very first scene, in which Ethan wakes up and he's in deep, having been captured and obviously beat up pretty bad. His wife is also captured, and in comes Philip Seymour Hoffman to tell Ethan he has an explosive charge in his head. He then gives him till he counts to ten to tell him where something called the Rabbit's Foot is before he kills his wife. One...Ethan thinks he already gave it to him. Two...three...four...five...Hoffman shoots his wife in the leg. Ethan sputters and tries to explain he already gave it to him...six...seven...eight...nine...Just talk to me, Ethan says. We can work this out. Ten. Bang. And then comes that great music...dun dun, dun dun dun dun...sorry, anyway. This first scene is the greatest and one of the darkest setups for a movie in a long time. And it just gets better. We rewind and see Ethan and Katie--I mean his wife at a party at his house, and he gets a call from an old friend. He meets him at the convenience store and he is told that an agent was captured by a dangerous arms dealer and he wants Ethan to get her back. He meets an old teammate played masterfully by Ving Rhames, reprising his role from the first movie, along with several new ones. Then we get another great action scene thrown at us...and when the agent dies and Ethan finds a "microdot", an encrypted message from the agent, which Ethan finds out is telling him that one of Ethan's higherups in the IMF is working in league with the arms dealer. This sparks action scene one after the other, as the IMF agent tries to cover his tracks by capturing Ethan, and Ethan is sent on a hunt to find the elusive biological weapon known as the Rabbit's Foot which is getting closer and closer to the hands of the arms dealer. From the IMF headquarters, to Rome, Italy, and ending in a huge climax in Beijing, the action and the smart plot just keep coming. The acting is great for a movie of this calibre. Tom Cruise is surprisingly good, Philip Seymour Hoffman rips it up, Laurence Fishburne is great and cold, Ving Rhames is awesome as usual, and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers adds a cool new character. There's one of the last scenes that's shockingly similar to a scene in Lost in which it seems all hope may be lost for Ethan Hunt, when suddenly, we get a miracle. It works very well and it drags on instilling real fear in the audience. It's just another sign of how great a director Abrams is, and hopefully we'll see him again soon. Overall, M:I3 is the best movie of the year so far, by far. Not only that, but it also exceeded my expectations by a mile and made me completely forget that Tom Cruise is a psycho who deserves a straight jacket. Almost.