Once a sucker...

In his latest blog letter from Los Angeles, Times of London correspondent Chris Ayres goes off on Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible III:

Like a sucker, I believed the advance hype about Cruise being back on form, and MI-III being a Bourne-slaying, Bauer-trashing thrillathon. It's not (spoilers will follow). The best thing I can say about it is that it's pretty short...

On paper, MI-III has all the right elements. You can almost see Cruise in his office, muscles tensed, trying not to blink (it makes the evil space aliens stronger!), going through the list. Way-cool gadgets? Check! Amusingly hapless British geek? Check! Lamborghini? Check! Philip Seymour Hoffman? Double check! Yet, aside from a few undeniably sweaty action moments, it doesn't hang together. It's as dumb as a bag of cement mix, for a start. Then there's Cruise, who is turning into a kind of 21st Century David Hasselhoff, only cheesier. Like many others, I can no longer believe Tom Cruise as any other character than Tom Cruise.

David Poland isn't too hot on the film either: "[J.J.] Abrams doesn't have the directing skills to make something more of the script's weaknesses of ambition."