'Mission: Impossible III': Can he keep ahead?

One-hour TV has been good to writer-director J.J. Abrams, good enough to get him the job of sustaining "Mission: Impossible," an action movie franchise that also began as one-hour TV. Is it any wonder that the Tom Cruise-starring "Mission: Impossible III" plays like two consecutive one-hour TV shows, one sort of standard, the other stocked with excitement?

By Kenneth Turan

May 5, 2006