Mission: Impossible III

J.J. Abrams opens at his own midpoint, the first scene showing a gun held to the hero’s wife, so everything after runs toward a moment you have watched already, worth knowing if you dislike the destination first. The shape is not one escalating plan but separate operations; Berlin, Vatican and Shanghai sit as episodes. What the object at the centre of the plot is never gets explained, so anyone needing that answered leaves empty handed. The Vatican break in is where a plan is laid out in full, and it sits in the middle. David Fincher left before this version existed, and Joe Carnahan then spent about fifteen months planning a fifty million dollar film set partly in Africa, with a villain modelled on Timothy McVeigh and Kenneth Branagh in the role; he quit in 2004 when the studio pressed for spectacle. To promote it, audio units playing the theme went into 4,500 Los Angeles Times news racks; several worked loose, were taken for explosives, and one was detonated by an arson squad. A good fit if an undefined object at the plot’s centre does not bother you and you prefer a heist whose plan is shown in full, as in the Vatican section. Not a fit if you would rather not hear about that opening interrogation beforehand.