Mission: Impossible 3

The high-octane juice audiences crave in big-budget action films surges propulsively through "Mission: Impossible III," in large measure due to Tom Cruise, who seems determined to give a persuasive human impersonation of a Ferrari. He succeeds to an almost alarming degree. Debuting director J.J. Abrams orchestrates the billion-dollar franchise's requisite elements with skill and energy, delivering a picture that will serve its purpose in getting Paramount's -- and the industry's -- summer B.O. season off to a bang-up start...

The thrills come mad hot and wicked sweet in Mission: Impossible III, the movie to beat this summer in the race to push your pulse rate past the danger zone. And please don't ask if the plot makes sense. It didn't the last two times either. Here's what counts: Tom Cruise is back as secret agent Ethan Hunt and he takes it to the limit -- running, jumping, punching, kicking, freefalling and flashing his laser-beam peepers with an intensity that could cut steel...

At a point worryingly early on in this first barrage of the mid-year blockbuster season, a pivotal character is injected straight into the ticker. "It's adrenalin," says man-with-syringe Ethan Hunt (Cruise), helpfully. And while he doesn't actually verbalise it, Cruise gives a look that says "and there's plenty more where that came from"...

...In his feature debut, "Lost" creator J.J. Abrams, who got the job on the basis of "Alias," takes the driver's seat with both feet on the accelerator. "M:I-3," more than its predecessors, is in the spirit of Lalo Schifrin's sizzling fuse of a theme from the original show -- interpreted here by Kanye West, along with pulse-quickening new compositions by Michael Giacchino. That theme music and the nifty gadgets are the true heart of the "Mission" legacy, and this film brings a good deal of fun to its infatuation with superspy tech. Although it trades in the same high levels of improbability as the previous films, Abrams and his co-scripters inject some humor and emotion, elements sorely lacking in the first two editions...

The summer movie season always has an official beginning, even if it gets nudged back a little earlier each year (by 2016, we'll probably be watching The Mighty Thor IV on President's Day). What it no longer has is any real end. The blossom-of-gasoline explosions, the crushed metal, the zippy seamless mutability of a world gone CGI, the heroes who, if not Superman, are always super men - what it all adds up to is Hollywood's endless summer, the ride that never stops...