Should you choose to accept him...

Just saw Mission: Impossible 3, aka "Crazy Like a Fox," aka "Are You Fucking Kidding Me?! I really liked it. In fact...



This is kinda a slantways answer to this review I read over on Time:

I present to you: Tom Cruise, as the postmodern living work of art. I come to you trying to grasp a full knowledge of the P word, because I hate it so very much. I loathe it. I think it's an easy out if you don't know what you're talking about and it sucks to hear people throw it about like so many croutons on the salad of my intellectual livelihood!
You can imagine my grief in having to pull the card right now for it.

From what I gather, it's got something to do with the rejection of preconceived Modern notions, which sprung from 19th and 20th century ideals. Much of it involves a knowledge of what is and what is trying to Be art, and finding ways to deconstruct said art. The fact that many people arguing on what it is and ain't is just extra icing on the cake of frustration.* I'll just use whatever I can from the definition: Irony in the form of self-awareness, a knowledge of what is and has been going on, and the dissection of these things.

Once we get past the wall of Film=Commerce> Film=Art, we can strip it down to essentials. We realize that this is a Summer Movie, and there will be conventions and stuff you've seen before. MI3 is a lean mean motha of a flick. It hits every last note of every spy movie worth a damn, short of downhill skiing with machine guns (a thing that spies pretty much shouldn't do, anyway). Gadgets, Guns, Girls. We've seen it! We know it deeply. And yes, on its base level, it's True Lies: Redux. However, this movie would be like Arnold making a movie about going on the Presidential campaign trail whilst simultaneously fighting members of the press who were sleeper cell ninjas, sent by Dubya, who's hell bent on securing an illegal third term by any means necessary. ** Okay, well it's not that crucial, but maybe you see what i'm getting at. It's a star vehicle packaged as a posit: "Is this motherfucker really crazy?" Shortish answer: "Yes, this motherfucker is really crazy."

The set pieces are totally engineered in a way that immediately recall iconic moments in the Cruise pantheon. these moments include (and are not limited to, see if you can find more):

Top Gun
Missions Impossible 1& 2,
Born on the Fourth of July
Far and Away,
annd I think maybe a touch of Jerry Maguire. Definitely.

Cruise's need to pull of some of his own stunts again blurs the line between what is going on between the film and real life. Jumping on Oprah's couch becomes jumping off of a 20 story building in Taiwan, and it might as well be the same thing. He's gotta do it to save the woman he loves! It's his job-- how else is he gonna pay for that sonogram machine that he's consistently zapping the baby with?! And he loves the wife/character in this movie well beyond the point of insanity. We get tears, rage, all the Cruisey stuff that nobody ever seems to think he does...but looking back on it, this guy is pretty intense. I'm not even talking about liking him as a person--I'm sure that Katie Holmes is heavily drugged and/or hypnotized, no doubt. Michelle Monaghan even looks like Katie Holmes, except she's got a slightly cuter nose and was totally great last year in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (get the dvd when it comes out, you non-movie seeing bastards), and so we break down another reality wall.
There are like 4 Impossible Missions total in the movie, and they're all kinetic and cool, and the pace doesn't lag too much. Everybody brings something to their roles (SIMON PEGG!!!!) and I don't think i've seen a better use of gadgets and trickery. Spy shit! Keri Russell totally tore it up in her limited screen time, and that's hard to do since I can't even watch Felicity. We get Marcellus Wallace in this one and not the "Tore my Versace shirt oh no you DIDN'T!" Ving Rhames that was in MI:Poo. And to top it all off, this movie not once, but twice effectively simulates my personal experience with a brain tumor.

Somewhere in the flick is the coolest lead up to the uttering of a Mother Goose line, possibly ever. I geek out.
Also, I may add that the Hoff is super seriously great in this. I don't want to meet his character, ever. He's the Mattress Man's evil twin! I may be totally reaching in this, but not only is this a Magnolia (ugh) reunion, but it's some sort of revenge on Hoffman for now getting the Oscar that perhaps Tom Cruise wishes he'd gotten years ago, or something. That doesn't even really work since this was made way before Oscar season. I guess I'll end it with that.

I gave the movie a hard eight until Kanye's new song AND remix came up on the credits, knocking it down a half point. I present to you, Tom Cruise as the Plane-Shootinest, Couch/Building Jumpinest, Baby-makinest, Car-slamminest, Nutty-Ass scientologist of the year, dedicated to you and me and whomever to becoming the World's First Living Summer Action Movie, in real time.
The end credits song should have been Gnarls Barkley's new single, "Crazy."

*Two food references in one review, huh. EDIT: I rectified the situation with some chocolate cake.
**I should get to work writing that!!!