Mission: Impossible III (DVD, 2006, Single Disc; Widescreen)

Tom Cruise is back in another action packed adventure as Special Agent Ethan Hunt in the third installment of this multi-million dollar film saga. This one does not disappoint. Familiar and new cast additions are well acted out, with Ving Rhames returning as Hunt's techie sidekick Luther. Newbies include Philip Seymore Hoffman who is severely underplayed as the deliciously nasty baddie; Laurence Fishburne and Billy Crudup as Hunt's superior officers; Kerri Russell as a newly trained agent on her first big assignment; Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Maggie Q as Hunt's newest team members and Michelle Monaghan as Hunt's lady love Julia.

Hunt has toned down his Missions and is happily training newbie agents while planning to settle down with perky doc Julia. One of his newest and brightest trainees is captured (oops) while trailing master baddie Davian (Seymour-Hoffman) and Hunt pops over to Europe with his team to rescue her, alive, which they fail to do. After the dressing down for both overrating the agent upon her graduation, and for failing to return her in one piece by Agency bigwig Brassel (Fishburne) and his underling Musgrave (Crudup), Hunt decides to take matters into his own hands and capture the thus far uncapturable Davian (after a brief stop at the hospital to get married). The thoroughly nasty Davian, sneering and threatening everyone during his brief captivity, promises to make Hunt pay for his insolence and is quickly extracted from Hunt's clutches by a team of rocket-launcher bearing, Marine-style ninjas. Hunt goes on the run to save his wife, his life, and an unknown horrifying WMD called the Rabbit's Foot, all while trying to figure out who exactly is doublecrossing whom.

The action is typical and non-stop and Cruise turns in another athletic performance as the special agent who just makes everyone else look lame, as long as he's not waxing eloquent about the mysteries of love (boooooring!). The pace is swift, the underlying story improbable but never impossible, and the spectacle and thrill of a big cinema explosion is all there to a hugely satisfying degree. MI fans will get their fix here.

CONS - Some arbirtrary plot twists; Seymour-Hoffman was underused in his role.

PROS - Cool stunts, explosions, gunplay, an awesome musical score, and a seemingly impossible mission.