Mission Impossible: Ultimate Missions Collection (5 Disc Box Set) [DVD]

You know what you are getting with the mission impossible movies, action and lots of it. I personally prefer the first movie but none of the three are unwatchable by a long way.

The HD-DVD release comes on a total of four discs MI:1 and MI:2 on one disc and MI:3 on two.

As far as picture quality goes the more recent the films were made the better the quality. MI:3 is reference quality and comes with many many extras including a video commentary which is not included on the bluray version of the movie.

The quality of MI:1 is less impressive but is still well above any other release of the movie in picture quality.

Overall a great box set that gives lots of action and a great way to show off the HD-DVD format.

Recently, I've been accusing myself of watching too much of and too serious movies - art house, World; serious, worthy, Oscar-winning, you know the sort.

I needed a holiday from those and to leave my brain elsewhere, at least for a few hours, to save it from self-implosion. Enter the Mission Impossible series of movies - ones I'd seen before and one (the second) at the cinema.

What's good about them is they're not stupid; far-fetched, yes but not in a completely moronic, absolutely ridiculous way and they feature some great, well known and recognisable actors. Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Vanessa Redgrave, Kristen Scott-Thomas and Jean Reno - and that's just the first film - all make for great viewing, a pleasure to watch and to focus on if the actions slips, or should we lose concentration.

Those last two things are unlikely to happen, though - these are essentially James Bond's in different clothing, niftly directed by top directors - Brian de Palma, John Woo and JJ Abrams, three of the biggest action flick makers working today.

Those old enough will be familiar with the M:I theme tune, that needs no introduction once we hear the first few notes and even the remixes used for the end credits sound pretty good!

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), though, isn't Jason Bourne and MIP's aren't quite at the level of smart sophistication of the Bourne quadrilogy, but are more fun and accessible and share Europe for the locations, making them a fast-paced and rather daring whistle-stop tour of our EU neighbours' finest cities. This makes a nice, more local change to all those action movies set in L.A. and Chicago etc.

The set is housed in a stout card slipcase and the discs come in separate slim-line cases.

I don't go for extras and all that; with the amount of DVDs I enjoy, I need them to be as low cost as reasonably possible and this is where M:I "Extreme" DVD trilogy really scores - at around 3 quid a movie, or £1.25 an hour, well that's one mission that's not impossible!

I bought this for my 11 year old son who'd only seen The Ghost Protocol in the cinema - this set was great value and has kept him entertained over the past couple of nights