Mission: Impossible Gift Set Collection (Mission: Impossible / Mission: Impossible 2 / Mission: Impossible 3)

Mission: Impossible Tom Cruise ignites the screen in this runaway smash hit that "holds you on the edge of your seat before blasting you out of it." (Howard Rosenberg, Los Angeles Times). Abrahms (Lost, Alias). Lured back into action by his agency superiors (Laurence Fishburne and Billy Crudup), Ethan faces his deadliest adversary yet - a sadistic weapons dealer named Owen Davian (Oscar® winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman). Fleeing from government assassins, breaking into the CIA's most impenetrable vault, clinging to the roof of a speeding bullet train, Hunt races like a burning fuse to stay one step ahead of his pursuers... Mission: Impossible II The world’s greatest spy returns in the movie event of the year, M:I-2. and draw one step closer to discovering the shocking truth. With the support of his IMF team (Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q), Ethan leaps into spectacular adventure from Rome to Shanghai as he races to rescue a captured agent (Keri Russell) and stop Davian from eliminating his next target: Ethan's wife, Julia (Michelle Monaghan). Mission: Impossible III This is Mission: Impossible...like you've never seen it before! But before the mission is complete, they’ll traverse the globe and have to choose between everything they love and everything they believe in. Top action director John Woo brings his own brand of excitement to the mission that finds Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) partnering up with the beautiful Nyah Hall (Thandie Newton) to stop renegade agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) from releasing a new kind of terror on an unsuspecting world. Cruise stars as Ethan Hunt, a secret agent framed for the deaths of his espionage team. Tom Cruise stars as Ethan Hunt in this pulse-pounding thrill ride directed by J.J.

The film combines equal elements of romance and action, and is best when it features the stunning allure of Thandie Newton as Nyah, a master thief recruited by the sinewy charms of Ethan Hunt (a fit Cruise). But in his first action-film lead role, Hoffman's almost too calm and collected to really make a memorable villain, especially when the rest of the cast--Ving Rhames (the only other cast member to return for all three films), Asian film star Maggie Q, and an underused Jonathan Rhys-Meyers--are a highlight as Ethan's IMF team. First-time feature director J.J. well, we don't really know what it does, but it's something about mass destruction that costs $850 million), but the action sequences, particularly one where Ethan faces down a helicopter on a bridge and gets flung hard against the side of a car, are particularly impressive since Cruise, at 44, is still doing most of his own stunts and shows no hint of the weathered look that's struck his action-star peers. John Polson (as an MI team member) is an Aussie talent to keep an eye on. Mission: Impossible is still fun popcorn spy fare, and if Cruise chooses to end the franchise here, at least he goes out on a high note. The nail-biting set piece--always a signature of director De Palma (Carrie, The Untouchables)--in which Cruise is lowered from the ceiling to retrieve information from a computer in a high-security vault--is an instant classic. Despite remarkable cinematography and awe-inspiring, trademark Woo photography, the movie offers a tepid story from legendary screenwriter-director Robert Towne (Chinatown, Without Limits) and a host of other writers, most uncredited. --Ellen A. Kim Based on the '60s TV show and an almost impenetrably complex (but nonetheless thrilling) original story by David Koepp (Jurassic Park) and Steven Zaillian (Schindler's List), with a screenplay by Koepp and Robert Towne (Chinatown, Shampoo), Mission: Impossible begins with veteran agent Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) and his expert crew embarking on a mission that goes horribly, horribly wrong. It's pretty daring and sophisticated stuff for a big-budget spy movie, but brains were always what put the Mission: Impossible team ahead of the competition, anyway, no? --Jim Emerson Mission: Impossible II Visually stunning, and a likely must for John Woo aficionados, the second Mission: Impossible outing from megastar Tom Cruise suffers from an inconsistent tone and tired plot devices--not only recycled from other films, but repeated throughout the film. Mission: Impossible A flashy, splashy summer-movie blockbuster that's fun and exciting without being mindless? That's the impossible mission accomplished by director Brian De Palma, star-coproducer Tom Cruise, and the crack team of Mission: Impossible. Plot is still a throwaway here (Cruise's Ethan Hunt rescues his kidnapped former trainee and works to steal a device that... Woo's famed mythic filmmaking is far from subtle, with heroic Hunt frequently slow-motion walking through fire, smoke, or other similar devices, replete with a white dove among pigeons to signal his presence. Abrams (bigwig TV director/producer of Lost, Alias, & Felicity) proves more than able-bodied in creating a Mission: Impossible that's leaner and less over-stylized than John Woo's sequel and less confusing than Brian De Palma's original. Ambrose holds hostage a virus and its cure, and offers them to the highest bidder. --N.F. Mendoza Mission: Impossible III At the time of its release, Mission: Impossible III's box office was plagued by the publicity backlash against couch-jumping star Tom Cruise. But nothing is what it seems. It's too bad, because this third installment of the spy thriller franchise deserved a better reception than it got. Hoffman plays Owen all teeth-clenched and cool, especially when threatening to kill Ethan in front of his lovely new wife (Michelle Monaghan) who has no idea of his spy life. But perhaps even more impressive, at least in retrospect, is a flashback sequence in which two characters attempt to reconstruct a series of events from multiple points of view. Deeply in love after a passionate night, the couple must then combat MI nemesis (and Nyah's former lover) Sean Ambrose (Ever After's Dougray Scott). The emphasis on romance is an attempt to develop character and a more human side to superspy Hunt, but still the dreary story proves a distraction from the exciting action sequences. It is, regrettably, as forgettable as the first big-budget, big box-office MIin 1996, and it's clear (as Towne confirms) that the plot was developed around Woo- and Cruise-written action sequences. (Though no Mission: Impossible stunt will ever be quite as simultaneously nail-biting and funny as the first film's wire-dangling break-in of CIA headquarters.) Mission: Impossible III boasts a pedigreed cast, particularly Oscar® winner Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote) as baddie arms dealer Owen Davian.