Mission Impossible III (2006)

A gigantic improvement on Mission Impossible 2, I really enjoyed Mission Impossible 3. I actually cared about the stakes, Tom Cruise and Michelle Monaghan have (some) chemistry, Philip Seymour Hoffman is a good villain, and Ving Rhames had something to do. I liked the sequence in Rome, and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge attack scene would have resulted in congressional investigations had it really occurred. Keri Russell's almost cameo part is a nice foreshadowing of her in The Americans. Perhaps my reception of the film benefits unduly from being graded on a curve, but I enjoy popcorn movies if they are competently done, and if not smart, at least not dumb, and this movie passed that test for me. ***