CAIRO: The most fascinating thing that always intrigued me about films is the viewers relationship with the film and its characters. There are various types of links the audiences create with the fictional characters of a drama - fascination, sympathy, idolization . etc. The most important relationship of all, however, is empathy. Any ordinary filmgoer attempts to find any type of connection through which they can relate to the story s protagonists and, consequently, related to some familiar experience. The appeal of glamorous Hollywood stars to the average citizen lies in those actors ability, through their roles, to allow anybody to experience, to a certain extent, how it feels to look, behave and live like them. The majority of these superstars strive to maintain a particular image through which the audiences associate them with. Once that image is distorted, viewers lose their association with those stars who face the grueling challenge of disappearing into other characters. Tom Cruise, one of the world s biggest film stars over the last 20 years, is a prime example of what happens when stars break their protective shield and unveil the tiniest, unnecessary details about their typically trivial lives. It all started last year when Cruise sacked his long time manager Ron Meyer, who flawlessly handled his public relations affairs for all those years, and replaced him with his sister. Meyer succeeded throughout the last two decades in concealing Cruise s bizarre actions and persona from the public eye. During those years, Cruise was solely known for his golden smile and poster-boy figure, and that was adequate enough for the public who never cared to ask for more. It wasn t the jumping-on-the-couch incident on Oprah or his unpersuasive relationship with Katie Holms or ever his relentless advocating of Scientology that caught the public's attention; it was his unpleasant, patronizing, shallow and unlikable persona that he unconsciously exposed through interviews. By the time War of the Worlds was released last year, Hollywood s former poster golden-man lost both his mystique and public respect. War of the World s success depended largely on Steven Spielberg and the widespread interest in the concept of the film. Mission: Impossible III was always regarded as the first real test for Cruise s fading star power and, unfortunately, he miserably fails. Mission: Impossible III finds ex-spymaster Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) leading a quiet domestic life with his new fiancée Julia (Michelle Monaghan). Ethan decides to break his retirement when his mentor Lindsey (Keri Russell) is kidnapped by Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an effete arms dealer. The repercussions of the rescue mission force Ethan and his team to rove around the world to capture Davian and unravel the mystery of an identified weapon called Rabbit s Foot. That s about it. If the plot sounds thin and banal, that s because it truly is. The previous "Mission Impossible films relied on one formula; combing Tom Cruise s appeal with big explosions and some flamboyant espionage tricks. Cruise s appeal has obviously suffered a lot. Throughout his career, the only character he essentially played is the cocky, irresistible hunk in search of redemption and peace. In Mission Impossible III, director J.J. Abrams takes away the superciliousness from his character and replaces it by a father/saint like qualities, and as a result producing some of the cheesiest lines I ve heard in a long time. Cruise fails to disappear in a character that seemed to have been tailored from his PR staff than from respectable writers. The protagonist of this film is not Ethan Hunt; it s Tom Cruise pretending to be someone else. That said, a large part of the process of enjoying the film is lost due to the fact that you don t care what happens to the main character. The large, eclectic cast of the film is given little room to play with their uninspired, one dimensional characters. Luther Strickell (Ving Rhames) is always Hunt s trusted right-hand man; Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is the bright transportation whiz; Zhen (Maggie Q) is the sexy, smart background operative; (Brassel) Laurence Fishburne, is the suspicious director of the IMF agency and John Musgrave (Billy Crudup), the honest, soft supportive agent. The winner of the most irritating character of the film proudly goes to Michelle Monaghan. From all of the women in all of the countries in all of the film studios in the world, Abrams had to choose an actress that looks exactly like Katie Holmes. Monaghan plays the girl-next-door who s thoroughly tedious and annoyingly sweet. Monaghan appears in every horrendously insufferable sequence of the film that includes one of the tackiest film weddings ever. The saving grace of the latest "Mission Impossible installment is the impeccable Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman, fresh off his Oscar win for "Capote, easily owns every scene he s in. He overcomes the shortcomings of his undeveloped characters to give one of the coolest, malicious and deliciously evil villains I ve seen in a long time. Hoffman is so good to the extent that, despite the predestined predictability of the story, you do believe that he might in fact kill Hunt. Director J.J. Abrams doesn t exhibit any promising vision in his directorial debut. Hollywood s new wonder kid is the creator of two of the biggest TV shows of recent years ("Alias and "Lost ). MI: III doesn t hold a candle to either shows and makes you wonder what was the deal with all false hoopla surrounding him. The "Mission Impossible movies are supposed to be about big explosions and impressive visual stunts, but apart from the Vatican entry and the bridge showdown between Hunt and Davian s men, all action sequences are dreary and unimaginative. I tried to enjoy those scenes as much as I could, but I didn t see anything remotely attractive as those visual feasts apparent in "Kill Bill, "The Matrix, or even the inferior "James Bond films. Abrams biggest failure though is his unwise approach to instill in what s supposed to be a fun action flick with a sense of dread and out of place seriousness. The end result is a film that s neither as fun as the first "Mission Impossible film nor as compellingly serious as The Bourne Supremacy. The last few years have witnessed an unexpected rise in the quality of several summer blockbusters. From the comic book heroes like Spiderman and Batman to the aforementioned Bourne films, these films were built on solid involving plots, multi-dimensional characters, threatening conflicts and terrific action. The difference between these films and Mission Impossible III is that the plot drives the action in the former, while the plot in the latter feels like a vain excuse to blow up as many objects as possible. Do we still need films like MI: III ? I don t believe we do. Cruise, on the other hand, needs a good role in an independent film like Magnolia in order to retain his credibility as an actor.
