Mission: Impossible III

 Review

Common Sense Media says

More boisterous and violent action; teens and up.
greenON: Content is age-appropriate for kids this age.
yellowPAUSE: Know your child; some content
may not be right for some kids.
redOFF: Not age-appropriate for kids this age.
not for kidsNOT FOR KIDS: Not appropriate for kids any age.

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Quality
 
Sometimes media can be age appropriate but a real waste of time. Our star rating assesses the media's overall quality.

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Parents say

Kids say

What parents need to know

Parents need to know that this movie includes frequent, intense scenes of violence, including a few (repeat) shots of a dead character's grisly face, whose loss causes some brief heartache for our hero). Secret agent action includes explosions (including tiny bombs that detonate inside agents' brains), shootouts with automatic weapons, missile fire, car and helicopter chases, falls, crashes, and torture (victims tied to chairs, showing sweaty faces and teary eyes). A couple kisses and then, following a quick hospital chapel wedding, has sex in a supply room (scene cuts away following removal of shirts); girl appears briefly in shower, head and shoulders up. Blood is visible following a few shootings. Ethan's face is repeatedly bruised and scraped. Characters drink wine, champagne, and beer. Villain smokes cigarettes a couple of times.

  • Ethan rides a motorcycle without a helmet; Ethan lies to his fiancee; villains kidnap Ethan's fiancee, tie her up, and hold guns on her; Ethan and IMF crew operate undercover, so they're lying for a living; villain/mole inside the U.S. government agency.
  • Action violence (explosions, fights, gunfire, missiles, two-chopper shootout, car chases, adrenalin shot to the heart, stabbing, throat-cutting, brain zapped by device through nasal passage); action sequences involve lots of shaky handheld camera; Ethan mourns his student's death (crying and holding body); threat of bioweapon ("Toxin 5"); gizmo called "rabbit's foot" (never explained) threatens world decimation; leaps off tall buildings (falling images); Ethan holds villain as if to drop him from a plane; Ethan zapped by weapon, convulses violently; fight in elevator (Ethan slams multiple men into walls); Ethan bites a villain to escape restraints; Ethan runs into people on the street in Shanghai to reach his destination; some slow-motion crashing and shooting; repeated threats to "kill you."
  • One agent wears a sexy red formal gown to go "undercover" at a party (shots emphasize men staring at her long legs and visible back/cleavage); Ethan and Julia show affection (kissing, nuzzling) and her siblings discuss the "new family" they'll be starting; Luther and Ethan joke about marriage to each other; sex scene post-marriage in hospital supply closet (brief and suggestive, shirts off, then cut away); Julia in shower (shoulders up), to establish vulnerability before her kidnapping.
  • A couple uses each of "ass" and "hell," plus "damn," "sonofabitch," "t--s," and four s-words.
  • 7-11 store; Slurpee; Kodak camera; Lamborghini.
  • Drinking (toast to engagement, champagne, martinis); villain smokes cigarettes; Ethan drinks a drug to become unconscious during ride to hideout.

What's the story?

In MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise ) faces off repeatedly with Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), seemingly over a very expensive ($850 million) world-killing device they call the Rabbit's Foot, but really, over their boy stuff. They are, after all, hero and villain, and they're destined to duke it out for your viewing pleasure. Now married, Ethan has given up field ops to train new IMF agents, but he's called off on an impossible mission by Musgrave (Billy Crudup)> to rescue former student, Lindsey (Keri Russell), who has been kidnapped by the diabolical Davian. Ethan's rushed off to meet with his old partner Luther (Ving Rhames), and the two get help in their series of high-octane action scenes, including a couple of beautiful newbies, Zhen (Maggie Q) and Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and an aptly twitchy tech, Benji (Simon Pegg).


Is it any good?

 

Mission Impossible IIIis boisterous and violent, a good ride. But for all the fun, it also includes some acknowledgement of costs: emotional, physical, and political. Reconceived by the Cruise-selected writer-director J.J. Abrams, Ethan is here made vulnerable by his love for someone else. That's not to say he's not also the usual Ethan, admirably decisive and troublingly hard-headed.

While the movie tends to privilege Ethan's perspective -- his stunts, his goals, his urgency -- when it cuts to occasional other views, the effect can be jarring. Pursuing his own ends without regard to consequences makes Ethan heroic from one angle, and not a little barmy from another. Ethan's excesses are admirable: he jumps off any building, drives any vehicle, shoots any weapon at any target. But when he risks those close to him, the stakes are different. The scariest possibility in M:I:III is not that Ethan will lose, but that he'll win, and along the way, absorb his pretty little wife into his fearsome orbit.


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What families can talk about

Families can talk about the tension Ethan feels between his job and his personal life/romance. How does he learn that lying to his wife has various costs, in terms of trust as well as her physical danger? They can also talk about action movies in general, and whether a movie needs violence in order to be thrilling.


This review was written by Cynthia Fuchs
Adult
April 9, 2008
 
I lost like a MILLION brain cells watching this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mission Impossible is for for two year olds. WE ALL should be watching something MATURE,ADULTLIKE like Barbie Fairytopia The Movie!!!!! Your children or spouse might complain in the beginning,but in the end they will be weeping over what a beautiful movie it is.

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Adult
April 9, 2008
 

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Adult
April 9, 2008
 
Just Plane Awsome!!!!
Mission Impossible 3 was the best one yet.

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Adult
April 9, 2008
 
Good

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Adult
April 9, 2008
 
Lots of Action
Quite violent. Do not let kids under the age of 13 see this movie. There are blood and disturbing images. The plot is interesting and the movie is very entertaining.

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Teen, 14 years old
August 30, 2011
 
Overall quite good
There is quite a lot of violence in this movie. However, I was pleased to see that Ethan had finally settled down with the woman whom he trully loved, as in the 2nd movie he slept with a woman after just meeting her!! Quite a few kisses. I also didnt like the whole lot of lying. Very intense movie if you are watching it for the first time. But overall quite good.

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Teen, 14 years old
February 7, 2010
 
Fun But Dusturbing!
Most violent of the series. Very good.

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Parent of 15 year old
July 14, 2009
 
Sensational, Thrilling Movie...
M:I 3 is a great movie. It is thrilling, suspenseful, action-packed, and completely implausible. But hey! That's what makes it fun. The main thing parents need to be concerned about in this film is the menacing villain (a sadistic black-market dealer) and the evil things he does to get his way. He kidnaps people, inserts chips into their brains (with a device that resembles a staple-gun), then activates the chips, which kill the people who have them. In another scene, he beats Ethan to a pulp and shoots a woman tied to a chair in the head. Elsewhere, people are shot, stabbed, and exploded, with some onscreen blood. One man is smashed by a car (we see it hit is body momentarily, but the rest is offscreen). There is some language: several "d**n"s and "h**l"s, plus two "SOBs" and a few "a*s"s. Once Ethan and his fiance are married, they rush into a supply closet and kiss passionately, while removing each other's clothes (the camera flashes away after shirts are gone, and no sensitive areas are shown).

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Kid, 13 years old
April 9, 2008
 

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This review was written by Cynthia Fuchs
Studio:Paramount Pictures
Director:J.J. Abrams
Cast:Laurence Fishburne, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tom Cruise
Genre:Action/Adventure
Run time:125 minutes
Theatrical release date:May 5, 2006
DVD release date:October 31, 2006
MPAA rating:PG-13
MPAA explanation:for intense sequences of frenetic violence and menace, disturbing images and some sensuality.

This review was written by Cynthia Fuchs
 

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About our rating system
ON: Content is age-appropriate for kids this age.
PAUSE: Know your child; some content may not be right for some kids.
OFF: Not age-appropriate for kids this age.
Learning ratings
BEST: Really engaging, great learning approach.
GOOD: Pretty engaging, good learning approach.
FAIR: Somewhat engaging, OK learning approach.
NOT FOR LEARNING: Not recommended for learning.

 

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