If nothing else, “Mission: Impossible III” is a triumph for television hit-maker J.J. Abrams. The creative force behind “Felicity” and “Lost” has managed to achieve in his motion picture directorial debut what seasoned veterans Brian DePalma and John Woo could not, and that’s craft a consistently engaging action packed adventure. Like Joss Whedon before him with (the far superior) “Serenity,” Abrams shows a gift for making movies, this third entry in the popular series a fun and energetic romp sure to keep audiences glued to their seats.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s great. In all honesty, I’m not even sure if the film’s a solid ‘good.’ Abrams does a splendid job of ratcheting up the tension right away, the filmmaker tying my stomach into matted legions of tightly wound knots that didn’t fully resolve themselves until well after the end credits came to a stop. The thing is, the moment I stepped outside the theater the whole experience of watching this sequel dissipated. Put plainly, I knew I had just had a good time for two hours, I just couldn’t quite figure out why.

Part of the reason why is that Abrams never let me catch my breath. This “Mission: Impossible” is shot out of a canon right and then refuses to let up. This time out, retired IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is brought back to duty to stop a nefarious arms dealer and secrets peddler named Owen Davian (recent “Capote” Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman) from obtaining a top secret weapon known as the ‘Rabbit’s Foot.’ With the aid of his highly trained team of experts; sexy Zhen (Maggie Q), cocky Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), good friend Luther (Ving Rhames); Hunt has only 48-hours to grab the Rabbit’s Foot before Davian murders his clueless newlywed wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan).

There are twists. There are turns. There are stunning international locales. There are death-defying stunts. There is everything and more viewers have come to expect from this series. Abrams and his co-writers do a slam-bang job of cementing the proceedings in a world-weary reality that’s almost as believable, and as richly realized, as the one Jason Bourne has spent two (better) pictures running around in. This movie is pure adrenaline from start to finish. It never lets up and it never slows down, the whole thing constantly on the move, on the go, always looking for more, more, more.

That this conceit works as well as it does is a testament to both the determination of the director and the skill of his actors. Say what you will about new proud papa Cruise (personally, I think he’s officially gone off the deep end for good), the man can deliver an emotionally wired performance when he wants to. There is a furious energy to Hunt bordering on the manic, yet due to the schizoid nature of his job and the potently romantic chemistry between him and Monaghan a person can’t help but relate. Throw in confidently self-assured support from the other members of Hunt’s IMF team (especially series regular Rhames), a nice bit of gamesmanship from Laurence Fishburne (taking over as the agency’s stern figurehead) and a loony character bit by “Shaun of the Dead” star Simon Pegg (playing a nutty computer expert) and the pieces for a good time are all in place.

As for Abrams, while he doesn’t manage a moment as brilliantly suspenseful as DePalma’s raid on the CIA’s computer in part one or Woo’s miraculously spine-tingling motorcycle chase in part two, his film is far better on the whole than those two ever were. Unlike the other two I really got the feeling this incarnation of the IMF team was just that, a team, assertively working one with the other to pull off jobs so mind-boggling they really could classify as impossible. For me, the highpoint is a brazen heist staged inside Vatican City, Hunt and his coworkers taking out their target with such swiftness I swear if I’d have blinked I might just have missed it.

The thing is, as entertaining as all of this is (and it is entertaining) the moment I stepped outside the movie theater the movie pretty much evaporated like a spring morning's  dew. There is no meat to this animal’s bones, no juicy complexities to sink your teeth into and savor a day or two down the road. Worse, while Hoffman’s two main scenes with Cruise are corkers (an opening one so good I thought I was going to chew my fingernails clean off), Davian is in the film so little the veteran character actor can’t begin to make him the titanic figure of indifferent evil he so richly deserves to be.

Pity, because the seeds are all there, Abrams obviously thinking less would be more in this case, while sounding nice on paper, is the completely wrong choice here. This is one instance where more would have indeed been more, the director having the opportunity to make a complexly nasty bad guy every bit as grand eloquent as Ron Rifkin’s seductively sinister Arvin Sloan on the television show “Alias.” Davian is scary and menacing thanks to that opening scene and that opening scene alone, and the fact my disgust of the man and his methods carried over throughout the picture is a testament to Hoffman’s skills as an actor and absolutely nothing else.

So I’m not exactly sure what to make of “Mission: Impossible III.” In all fairness, the previous two were flawed, interesting escapades that didn’t quite make the grade and this one has the distinction of being pretty much the exact opposite; a flawed, exciting adventure that pretty much does make it. Is that enough? And will it, without any of the bravura set pieces of the previous two, hold up on subsequent viewings when the adrenaline is missing and twists and turns are already known?

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find out for yourself. Feelings of disappoint or exhilaration, if they come, are unfortunately optional and impossible to predict.

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)