By Armond White

Mission: Impossible III

Directed by J.J. Abrams

How shrewd of Tom Cruise to understand that the media backlash that started with the best work of his career—the highly cinematic Minority Report and War of the Worlds—could be turned around with television. 

This third installment of Cruise’s TV-derived franchise was directed by J.J. Abrams of TV’s Alias with an uncannily uncinematic emphasis on what should rightly be called “inaction”—stunts, f/x, editing, music, flash—professionally designed to not move you where it counts. 

It’s remote-control filler—which has become textbook style for our current film era.