Awesome / Mission: Impossible III

• The effects department gets a big one for the Owen Davian mask scene. Pure movie magic.
• The Vatican Heist. The team infiltrates the Vatican, slips past security, gains access to underground tunnels under the building, photographs the bad guy, creates a mask that is a perfect replica of his face, captures him and lets a disguised Ethan take his place after which they fake his death by blowing up a car, so that his entire entourage thinks he's dead. Wow.
• Philip Seymour Hoffman deserves a medal for his performance as Owen Davian. He goes from quietly sadistic to terrifying rage AND BACK in a matter of seconds, not to mention the time he is playing Ethan Hunt in disguise.
  • Another thing to consider is that he had just won on Oscar for Capote and his role here is exactly the kind of film you'd expect a respected actor to just do for the paycheck before going back to more fulfilling projects, barely putting an effort into it. But Hoffman completely commits to the role without a single hint of irony or detachment or a sense that he's treating this any less seriously than he has any other role. Another reminder of just what a talented actor he was.
• Ethan sprinting flat-out through a Chinese riverfront town to save Julia. He seems to cover a few kilometres in a few minutes.
• Ethan vs. Davian. After spending most of the fight getting brutally beaten and tossed around like a rag doll, Ethan makes a big comeback and delivers almost the same beatdown right back to Davian before pushing him in front a speeding truck.
• Julia taking a level in badass in the climax. She is a nurse, and has never used a gun before in her life, but she guns down the two Dragons by predicting their positions with one's reflection and footsteps respectively, all in time to revive Ethan with a CPR. Even Ethan is surprised when he sees what happened when he comes to. Beware the Nice Ones indeed.
  • One goes to Ethan grabbing the gun next to him and hugging Julia in one swift motion the second he comes back to life. It was not needed since Julia had killed everybody, but its shows Ethan's always ready for the job, even when coming out of near death

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