First scene appears to be something that
is going to happen later, Ethan secured to
a chair & a villain giving him a countdown
to 10 to tell him where the "rabbit's foot"
is or he'll kill a girl who's tied to a chair, ...

.... & Ethan responds in an effort to pre-
vent the villain from shooting the girl &
the count reaches 10, then the following
(apparently much earlier) transpires:

Well, Nyah evaporated & the movie opens
with Ethan (Tom Cruise) on the verge of
marrying a new girl. He's now a trainer
but he's called to go help a captured Mis-
sion Impossible agent (a female) escape.

At that escape, lots of gunfire & annoying
(as in bad) non-Mission-Impossible music
& bombs. They're escaping in a chopper
& multiple choppers firing bombs at them
are chasing them. The female who's es-
caping, they've planted a chip in her head ...

.... that's causing her to be in pain. It ap-
pears that the chip in her head killed her
& she died in Ethan's arms (the actress
playing the dead agent is Keri Russell).

Ethan returns to his fiance's arms & then
goes to a hearing about what happened
on the rescue attempt.

Sidenote: 30 minutes into the movie, & I
must say, right now, I preferred everything
that happened in Mission Impossible 2
over what's happening thus far in this
movie.

The music is terrible throughout the
movie (they're big on horns for some
reason, yuck). Ethan & his fiance elope,
Ethan asks his fiance if she trusts him,
she says yes, & Ethan's entire Mission
Impossible life is kept a secret from her.

I've not yet developed any interest in
anything going on. I'm leaning thus far
on a thumbs down 50 score for this
movie, but it's early, 45 minutes in, so
there's still time for it to recover. They're
at the Vatican, up to something. What?
I don't know.

The villain is there. Ethan uses a face-
mask & switches places with the vil-
lain (the villain is played by actor Philip
Seymour Hoffman in the role of Owen
Davian). The team escapes with some-
thing (a gold briefcase), probably the
rabbit's foot?

They place the villain on a plane & Ethan
finds out the villain killed the female agent
(played by Keri Russell) & said "it was fun."
Ethan responds by coming close to send-
ing the villain to his death, but stops just
before killing him.

The villain, by the way, says he'll find Ethan's
love (his wife) & will harm her prior to killing
Ethan (reference the first scene).

On a bridge the villain is being transported
on, they're attacked with bombs, a chopper
shows up & fires at people on the bridge
including Ethan & MI agents, a drone fires
a bomb, the villain is let out of the truck
by some of the villain accomplaces.

The villain escapes on the chopper. Ethan
fears his wife is going to be attacked, so
he tries to call her at the hospital where
she works & drives rapidly towards the
hospital. A guard at the hospital shows
up, asks Julia (Ethan's wife) a question, ...

.... sticks a dot on her & she collapses
into his arms. Ethan gets to the hospital
too late. The villain calls Ethan & tells him
he has to have the briefcase (i.e., rabbit's
foot) in 40 hours or Julia will die. A gang
of guys show up to pick up Ethan.

Federal agents? Not sure, they shoot him
with something causing him to go to the
ground, he's put in handcuffs & his boss
stands over him. His boss is speaking
down to him in a chastising manner.

Another associate of Ethan's also speaks
out loud to Ethan in a chastising manner
but silently mouths instructions to Ethan
to help him deal with Julia's abduction.
He hands Ethan some device.

In an elevator, Ethan uses the device to
help him get free & attack the agents in
the elevator. Ethan escapes through the
top of the elevator.

Ethan's MI team comes to help him. They
have to steal the rabbit's foot that has
been secured in a building & they're go-
ing to have to overcome security guards
to get to & steal the rabbit's foot. Some-
how all this is taking place in Shangai.

At one point, Ethan jumps off a building,
swings to another building, slides down
the slanted roof of that building & barely
grabs the side to avoid plunging to his
death.

He gets the rabbit's foot (in a container
labeled biohazard), jumps out of a build-
ing with a parachute (kinda sorta) &
ends up plunging into another building.
Then, the parachute pulls him out of
that building & he lands just above the ...

.... ground, but loses the biohazard that
skirts on the ground through moving traf-
fic. He gets the biohazard & he only has
2 minutes before the deadline for Julia
being killed. Fed agents are chasing
Ethan & his team.

Ethan has been trying to call the villain
to let him know he has the biohazard
but couldn't get his phone to work. He
finally did & the villain says he had 5
seconds left. They arrange for a meet-
ing.

We're 1 hour 33 minutes into the movie
which has been interesting since that
45 minute point mentioned above. 30
minutes to go & we appear to be at the
scene that started the movie.

Now, mysteriously, as he had the rabbit's
foot, the biohazard, when he got into a
car at the meeting, where he was told to
drink a vial that put him to sleep. The vil-
lain is acting like he didn't get the bioha-
zard, hence a countdown to 10 as I wrote
about at the top of this post.

He either shot/killed Julia or he pretended
to. Not sure if the woman who the villain
was threatening was actually killed or not.
See below. If she was, that's another des-
picable killing by the villain.

The associate that helped Ethan escape
from his boss appears & says "it's compli-
cated."

Julia, the associate says, is still alive, but
he ripped away her covering & she's not
talking. Probably because she was killed.
It appears that wasn't Julia & Julia is some-
where else. The associate is asking what
the 1st female agent (Keri Russell) told
Ethan in a microdot.

Before telling him, Ethan bites the associ-
ate's hand, attacks him, & gets free. Ethan
calls someone to try to trace the call the
associate made so Ethan could hear Julia.
That someone Ethan called locates Julia
about a mile away & Ethan gets that some-
one to help him find Julia.

20 minutes left. Ethan finds Julia, kills the
villain, frees Julia, the villain placed a kill
chip in Ethan's head. Ethan trains Julia
how to shoot his gun, tells Julia she'll
have to bring him back to life, then elec-
trocutes himself to prevent the chip from
killing him.

Julia kills 2 attackers including Ethan's
associate who conspired against Ethan.
Julia labors intensely to resuscitate
Ethan & after many tries, she succeeds.
They recover the biohazard & all ends
well.

The combo of a 50 for the 1st 45 min-
utes, bad music for the entire movie, a
lack of interest shown in the romance
'tween Julia & Ethan, a letdown after
MI2 had a hot romance 'tween Ethan
& Nyah, all of that wasn't overcome ...

.... by the good last 1 hour 20 minutes,
with a good ending except the killing
of the anonymous female (if she was
killed, not sure if she was) so overall,
I have to give it a thumbs down 65.

Julia was played by Michelle Monaghan.

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