MI:III

The Cruise-produced Mission Impossible:III works well as mindless fun, but maybe someday someone will actually put together a movie based on the old TV show. This version is solely concerned with three (or so) distinct action scenes which could of course be in any order and still make sense. As action scenes go, they are fine -- and, hard as it is to admit, they work because of the energetic focus of Tom Cruise (who's apparently  trying to take over the mantle of wierdest celebrity now that Michael Jackson is unavailable).

The only real let-down is that character development is so pared down that Philip Seymour Hoffman's evil overlord has barely anything to do. Hoffman dead-pans his lines perfectly and then is shuffled off-screen so that we can get to the next explosion. We saw Hoffman and Cruise together (almost) in the melodramatic Magnolia ;  since nothing in this film's plot is there to make sense, why not have a throwaway scene where the two stars can actually have a dialog?

Still and all, probably the best of the three....