One could argue that the 1986 hit “A Matter of Trust” by Billy Joel is actually about Mission: Impossible III.
“… I’ve lived long enough to have learned
The closer you get to the fire, the more you get burned
But that won’t happen to us
‘Cause it’s always been a matter of trust.”
Of course, Mission: Impossible III – the third installment of the incredibly successful Mission: Impossible franchise that would go on to make movies for another nearly 20 years – didn’t release until well after the song and iconic album came out. Nonetheless, it encapsulates the 1996 film perfectly. It’s always been a matter of trust…
M:I III, directed by J.J. Abrams, and starring the irreplaceable Tom Cruise, amongst franchise stalwarts Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg, is special. It manages to set itself apart from the eight-movie, multi-billion-dollar franchise in myriad ways, most prominently by humanizing Ethan Hunt (Cruise) through action and the theme of trust. This choice acts as a fulcrum (just like the skyline of Shanghai does for Hunt’s third act stunt!) for the rest of the film series, delineating this entry as perhaps the most important among the rest.
While the idea of humanizing Hunt beyond a near super-human guy who saves the world and completes impossible missions when nobody else can isn’t necessarily new, it is interrogated on a much more complex level within M:I III. Compared to the entry that does it the next best way, in my opinion, which would be Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, this film lays fruitful groundwork in the matter. The engagement party for Hunt and his fiancée, Julia (Michelle Monaghan), sets the stage for this.
In the first scene after the indomitable, powerful cold open, Hunt is just a normal guy in love. He is hosting a party. He is talking about his fake job at the Virginia Department of Transportation, a totally “average guy” job, and is deeply, unapologetically in love.
His first response to getting called back into the field is to opt for a normal life. “You’ve got good people for that,” he tells Agent Musgrave (Billy Crudup) after a moment of thought. Hunt’s connection to Julia evokes the underlying theme of devotion and trust most in a movie full of moments like that. Three key moments to be exact:
First, a small, almost unnoticeable exchange between the couple in which Hunt has to expeditiously leave for a “public transpo conference” in the morning, and Julia allows it to happen. Second, a much larger, more emotional exchange in which Hunt tells Julia he needs her to trust him regarding the IMF (Impossible Mission Force) world creeping into hers, to which she replies, again with blind belief, “Of course I trust you.” And third, the most important, the visually explosive moment of trust in which Hunt expresses “I‘m going to die unless you kill me” to Julia after rescuing her in Shanghai.
All of these moments coalesce to prove the power of trust, yes, but also to recognize how dependent Hunt is on trust, both inside his intimate relationship and outside of it, as we see in the rest of the film. The complicated yet fascinating and fantastic B-Plot of Mission: Impossible III resides on the distrust within the IMF itself. Brassel (Laurence Fishburne), the director of the IMF, Agent Musgrave, and Hunt himself embark on a who’s who side mission of sorts.
With Brassel being framed as setting up Hunt to risk his life to save another IMF agent and Musgrave helping Hunt escape capture only to betray him later, Luther’s (Rhames) sentiment to Hunt that “dishonesty poisons everything” could not be truer. The near-impossibility of genuine trust is a burden borne by Hunt and all who interact with him. A very large idea that is as persuasive as it is important in future installments.
Perhaps the most chic highlight of this thematic journey lies in the film’s villain, Owen Davian. Played diabolically by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Davian operates his entire identity as a black market trafficker on blind faith — That the right contacts will be who they say they are and have the resources they claim. Hunt and Davian entrust each other in a near parasitic fashion, one relying upon the other to further their own mission. Davian, to find and sell the “Rabbit’s Foot,” and Hunt to track Davian down and stop him from doing exactly that. No better scene exhibits this strange harmony than the cold open.
Of course, the entirety of the Mission: Impossible franchise revolves around this theme of trust, both introspectively (which M:I III also tackles in a gripping form) and visually. The masks. The deception. The capabilities of enemies and world powers. All is laid bare in this installment to enhance the effectiveness of each in later films. It goes all the way down to Mission: Impossible III being the most important of the films in terms of Maguffins — the Rabbit’s Foot comes full circle in The Final Reckoning as a key totem to save the world — and ideas of destruction —again with the Rabbit’s Foot and the possibility of an “Anti-God” that could contain an “unstoppable force of destructive power,” mirroring what The Entity represents in the final two installments of the franchise.
Mission: Impossible III feels as though it has retained its identity as the least-loved and least-respected entry in an otherwise publicly praised series. It’s not quite bad enough to warrant reclamation (Mission: Impossible II obviously holds this crown), and it existed before the franchise found its true footing in Rogue Nation(2015) and Fallout (2018), thus occupying a nearly forgotten space among the entries. However, I urge you to give it another look and recognize its significance, thematically and otherwise. And if you don’t believe me after all of this, just remember… it really has always been a matter of trust.
Retrospective Courtesy of Ethan Simmie
Feature Image credit to Paramount