Cruise returns as IMF (Impossible Mission Force) agent Ethan Hunt, who has left the espionage field to become a trainer of future field agents at the agency. He has also become engaged to a nurse named Julia (Michelle Monaghan), who knows nothing about Ethan's career (she thinks he works at the Department of Transportation). In short, it seems that IMF's top spy has come in from the cold to settle down.

Naturally, that doesn't last. During Ethan and Julia's engagement party, Hunt gets a phone call from his old boss, John Musgrave (Billy Crudup). It seems that one of Ethan's first protégés, Lindsey Ferris (Keri Russell), has gone MIA on a mission in Germany and they need Ethan and a newly assembled team, including former team member Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and newcomers Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Zhen (Maggie Q), to get her out.

They carry off the mission but not without a price, and Ethan wants revenge on the man responsible for that: Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a cold and ruthless black market weapons dealer whom Ferris was pursuing when she was captured. Davian was in the midst of a pricey weapons deal for a high-tech gadget (the film's Maguffin) called the Rabbit's Foot. Going against the orders of the bureaucratic IMF director Brassel (Laurence Fishburne), Hunt and his team head off across the globe in the attempts of retrieving the Rabbit's Foot and capturing Davian.

For the $150 million poured into the production and all the hype we have had to endure over the past couple of months (not to mention the six-year wait between instalments), Mission: Impossible III comes off as a decent but ordinary and near-instantly forgettable piece of entertainment.

Television whizz-kid JJ Abrams, he of Lost, Alias and Felicity fame, makes his feature-film directing debut here. To his credit, he manages to give the franchise a bit of life through bits dealing with Ethan's personal life and some decent, amusing exchanges with his IMF team, who for the first time in this franchise are actually put to good use. Abrams also delivers three solid set pieces: Lindsey's rescue and an ensuing helicopter fight in Germany, an operation in the Vatican and a True Lies-esque bridge battle on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

But just when things seem to be going well, the Achilles Heel of the Mission: Impossible franchise, the script, begins to rear its ugly head. The screenplay, by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci (the duo responsible for The Island and The Legend Of Zorro) and Abrams, isn't as convoluted as the story for film one or pretentious as film two, but it still suffers from being far too predictable and ludicrous for its own good. I love crazy stunts, situations and explosions as much as the next person and am more than willing to suspend disbelief for a film of this type (it's not a choice but a requirement), but M:I-3 pushes the envelope beyond the breaking point. Worse, the romantic subplot feels better suited for an episode of Abrams' Felicity than it does an action thriller.

Cruise's performance doesn't have much range or depth to it, but this type of film doesn't really require acting on a level of Magnolia or Collateral. You expect Tom Cruise the Movie Star to be Tom Cruise the Action Figure and that's exactly what you get, which is not necessarily a bad thing. A solid supporting cast surrounds him, starting with the great Philip Seymour Hoffman who makes the most of his limited screen time as Davian. Monaghan is adequate as Julia despite the fact that she and Cruise display zero romantic chemistry. Rhames makes a welcome return, while series newcomers Crudup, Fishburne, Maggie Q, Meyers and Simon Pegg in a funny cameo as an IMF tech whizz, are all commendable.

While watching the previews for Mission: Impossible III a few months back, the abbreviated title blazed across the screen as M:I-lll. I then jokingly turned to my friend and said "Mill? As in 'run of the'?" It seems that my lame pun turned out to be a sort of omen: M:I-3 is a run of the mill action film and a pedestrian kick off to the 2006 summer movie season.

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