Mission: Impossible III [2006]

Run, Tom, run! He might have gone a bit batty lately, but you can always rely on the Cruiser for first-class running action. That boy just loves to run. There's no shortage of sprinting in this, the third and most entertaining of the Mish Iposs franchise. First Tom runs around the Vatican, chasing Philip Seymour Hoffman. Then he runs across a bridge. Then he runs around Shanghai, searching for his kidnapped wife. Phew! It's Marathon Impossible.

After a lengthy development period that has seen innumerable actors and directors hired and fired, you might expect M:I III to be a bit of a dog's dinner. But director JJ Abrams (of Lost and Alias fame) brings an admirable clarity to this convoluted tale of evil arms dealer Hoffman's attempts to sell off a deadly weapon called Rabbit's Foot. The script manages to cram in brain-bombs, a breathless helicopter chase through a wind farm and a new twist on those delightful face-mask disguises, while remaining just on the right side of preposterous. Abrams' shooting, meanwhile, is witty and unobtrusive. It's a great relief after the operatic stupidity of John Woo's M:I II.

"LESS OF AN ACTION HERO"

The only real problem is Tom himself, who manifestly fails to convince as a human being. With his plasticised musculature and ten kilowatt grin, he's less of an action hero and more of an action figure. It's getting harder with each film to divorce the movie persona from the sofa-vaulting loon, and his onscreen marriage to an insipid Michelle Monaghan only invites the comparison. It's no surprise that Hoffman steals - and saves - the movie as a repellent, lizard-eyed villain.

Mission: Impossible 2 [2000]

Ruthless Impossible Mission Force agent Ambrose (Dougray Scott) steals an antidote to a new virus and offers it and the virus for sale to the highest bidder. IMF's Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is assigned to get it back - by using Ambrose's ex-girlfriend Nyah (Newton) to infiltrate Ambrose's group.

You will be excited, thrilled - and insulted. The story is good, if simple, but seemingly it can never be quite simple enough becausethe film continually halts the action to repeat the plot to us, sometimes word for word.

There are heart-stopping moments of excitement and there are plenty of good surprises. But there's also a painfully silly romance storyline straight out of a 1960s movie and always someone ready to explain that plot again.

Action is where this movie does shine. Unfortunately, the cleverest sequences are punctured by playground logic: 'Your barrage of gunfire can't hit me but my one bullet can kill you'.

The action looks gorgeous, though, and director John Woo and perhaps especially director of photography Jeffrey L. Kimball make the whole movie look fabulous. And Tom Cruise's performance, outside the romance, is first rate too, so this should have everything going for it. Yet we're treated as children and there's an annoying arrogance in that.

There is a reason for it: the dumbed-down plot is a kneejerk over-reaction to the idea that the first film had a complicated script. Hopefully if we can persuade the makers to treat us as adults, we'll get an M:I3 that's really good.

Mission: Impossible [1996]

There's a traitor in the heart of America's most secret spy network, the Impossible Mission Force. He or she is trying to steal IMF's critical agent list which would give America's enemies the names of every covert operative in the world. When a mission goes badly wrong, agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is suspected of being the turncoat and becomes a hunted man. With all the might of IMF now turned against him, Hunt must flush out the real traitor - even if that means stealing the secret list himself.

Did you follow that? The sole criticism levelled against "Mission: Impossible" on its cinema release was that the plot was difficult, even incomprehensible and it's a surprising, unfair and rather wounding criticism. It undoubtedly put many people off this very exciting thriller, but - much worse - this criticism also directly led to the extreme over-simplicity of "Mission: Impossible 2".

The plot isn't perfect and it has holes in it (Hunt could just forge that list, he needn't really steal it) but most things happen for a reason,better than it just being time for the next action sequence. It means that you appreciate the mounting pressures on Hunt and that's what makes the famous scene of him hanging from a roof in CIA headquarters so extraordinarily tense.

Four years on, and with a John Woo-directed sequel to compare it to, "Mission: Impossible" feels a little dated but it is a superior story and a genuinely more effective thriller.

"Mission: Impossible" is on BBC1 at 8.05pm, Thursday 1st February 2001.