Starring: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne
Directed by: J.J. Abrams
Studio: Paramount Home Entertainment
Video: 2.40:1, 1080p widescreen for 16:9
Audio: English, French, and Spanish, Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles and Captions: English SDH, English, French, and Spanish
Supplements: Audio commentary by Cruise and Abrams; Nine featurettes (“Go Behind The Camera With The Making Of The Mission”(HD), “Inside The IMF”, “Mission Action- Inside The Action Unit” (HD), “Visualizing The Mission” (HD), “Mission Metamorphosis” (HD), “Scoring The Mission” (HD), “Launching The Mission”, “Moviephone Unscripted” and “Excellence In Film”); five deleted scenes (HD); still gallery (HD); TV spots; theatrical trailers; Easter eggs
Running Time: 125 minutes
Rating: ****
Director J.J. Abrams (Lost, Alias) takes the helm in this third installment of the popular movie franchise wherein IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has now retired from active agency duty and is focusing on his family. When an IMF agent is captured however, his superiors lure Hunt back into action. A ruthless weapons dealer named Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is the man responsible for the kidnapping. Hunt feverishly travels the globe in an effort to stop Davian before he eliminates his next target: Ethan’s wife. Despite its below-expectation summer 2006 box-office numbers, ‘M:I:3’ might be the best film of the ‘M.I.’ trilogy. It successfully weaves dazzling action sequences into a sincere domestic drama. The acting is first-rate and Hoffman does a great job in creating an over-the-top, maniacal villain. An entertaining storyline, numerous special features and a splendid audio/video presentation make ‘M:I:3’ a highly recommended Blu-ray purchase.
The overall video quality of this Blu-ray DVD is excellent, aided in part by the decision to devote one disc entirely to the movie (other than the inclusion of an audio commentary) to maximize bitrate and include a second disc just for the special features. Images are clean with fine detail. Colors are rich and bold with well-saturated hues. Picture defect mastering is solid with no flaws or compression artifacts. The overall audio quality of the compressed English Dolby Digital 5.1 track is excellent. It aggressively utilizes all of the discrete channels. Dialogue is natural-sounding and intelligible. The surround channels are very active and used for both the sound effects and the music soundtrack. Given that this is a reference-quality audio track in its current format, it would be really interesting to hear how much better an uncompressed PCM track or lossless Dolby TrueHD or DTS-MA track would sound for this movie. Here’s to hoping that any new Blu-ray editions of ‘M:I:3’ in the future give us that opportunity.
– Calvin Harding Jr.
