(No spoilers)

I was expecting to see a movie that was mostly an excuse to see Tom Cruise look really angry and get to use lots of cool toys to do, you know, impossible things. And here and there would be some funny moments, mostly centered around Ving Rhames. Toss in a few really hot women with guns and you have a movie worth the price of admission.

As it turned out MI3 had more acting than I expected and much less action. You know the iconic scene they did in the first movie? None of that, although they did a nice little homage to it that only took about 5 seconds.

We do get a lot of scenes were Ethan is just too pissed off for words. Which is good because Tom Cruise has his iconic stare going pretty good for most of the film.

Going to the theater I wasn’t expecting much. Leaving the theater I felt that I’d gotten more than I expected. It’s kind of hard to rate a movie based on that combination.

Perhaps the best thing to do is rate it by comparison. Is it better than the first MI movie? Yeah, pretty much. It goes without saying that it’s way better than the second MI. But it’s not nearly as good as Bourne Identity though it’s pretty much on par with Bourne Supremacy.

You know, I think that’s a great way to rate a movie by placing it in a spectrum of similar movies. I’ll work on that list and add it to this blog soon.