Cruise’s alias is lost in this MI3 translation

Tom Cruise has returned as Ethan Hunt, the secret agent who makes the impossible possible.

Cruise wanted the second installment of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise to come with a side of romance, and the same is true of “Mission: Impossible III.”

At the onset of the story, Hunt has fallen in love with Julia (Michelle Monaghan), gotten engaged and taken a position training other agents. When his protégé (Keri Russell) is captured, Hunt feels obligated to suit up and rescue her.

This is an action-packed movie with a parade of visually stunning action sequences spread out over exotic locales. If that’s your thing, then it’s worth seeing on the big screen. From a technical standpoint ? special effects and sound design ? it’s impressively well-crafted.

But blockbuster action aside, the story feels flat. I’ve narrowed the problem down to three likely suspects.

First, for this latest installment in the series, Cruise tapped “Alias” and “Lost” creator J.J. Abrams to co-write and direct the movie. It was a safe choice. It was not the way to go for someone looking to take the series to a new level. The only way Abrams put his stamp on the film is by giving a bit part to Greg Grunberg (an alum of his shows “Felicity,” “Alias” and “Lost”) and casting Felicity alum Keri Russell. The movie feels uninspired. It’s as if Abrams had used up all his secret spy material on “Alias.” In fact, we don’t even get to see the impossible mission play out in this one; instead, we see the rest of Hunt’s team waiting in the car.

A lot of what we do see is familiar. Hunt’s boss (Laurence Fishburne) doesn’t trust him, and so Hunt has to become a rogue agent yet again. His love interest is kidnapped again. And a couple of times I had to remind myself I was watching “MI3” and not “True Lies.” We also get two different scenes in which people bound to chairs threaten to kill their captors. That alone is enough to inspire another Austin Powers movie.

The second reason for the movie’s lack of carbonation is the mere fact that Hunt’s heart isn’t really into it. While out on his missions, he defensively explains to his teammates (Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q) his reasons for getting married and waxes nostalgic about life “before all this.”

There’s a writing term for this ? the reluctant hero -- and avid moviegoers will recognize it as a staple of the Hollywood lexicon. But in this case, it seems to rob Hunt of the style and verve, the thrill of the challenge that we saw in “Mission: Impossible.” This time around he’s motivated out of a sense of guilt and then, after his nemesis Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) kidnaps his fiancée, out of desperation.

The third and most likely reason for the lack of drama is the fact that Abrams decided to open the film with a climatic scene that actually takes place much later in the story. It was as if Abrams wanted to start the movie with a bang, but rather than writing and shooting the bang, he just used something he already had on film.

This foreshadowing scene robs us of a lot of the story’s dramatic tension. We already know where we’re going, but we have to wait an hour and a half to get there. If I wanted to watch a movie this way I’d rent them on DVD, skip to the last chapter and watch it before starting at the beginning.