The film was directed by J. J. Abrams, and was his first film as a director. It was first released on April 26, 2006 at the Tribeca Film Festival, and widely released in the United States on May 5, 2006.
The film was a box office success, and it received mostly positive critical reviews. It holds a Metacritic score of 66%, based on a normalized average of 38 reviews. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has retired as a team leader at the IMF and instead taken to training new recruits while settling down with his fiancée Julia Meade (Michelle Monaghan), a nurse at a local hospital who is unaware of Ethan’s past. At a party, Ethan is approached by his fellow IMF agent John Musgrave (Billy Crudup), who secretly relays a mission to him: to rescue one of Ethan’s protégés, Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell), who was captured while on a mission to investigate the infamous black market dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Musgrave has already prepared a team for Ethan, consisting of Declan Gormley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), Zhen Lei (Maggie Q), and his old partner Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), ready to meet him in Berlin.