10 Most Intense Movie Openings Ever

Mission: Impossible III is far from the strongest entry into the franchise, but it does begin with perhaps the single-most intense and attention-grabbing use of the in medias res narrative technique, where a movie begins with a scene from the middle of the story.

The spy thriller sequel kicks off not with Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) performing a death-defying stunt as audiences typically expect, but with Hunt handcuffed to a chair and being tortured by the film's antagonist, Owen Davian (a brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Davian gives Hunt to the count of ten to reveal the location of the technological MacGuffin known as the Rabbit's Foot, or he'll shoot Ethan's wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) in the head.

It's a devilishly taut sequence in which Davian and Hunt grow increasingly frustrated with one another, Ethan bargaining for his wife's life while Davian's impatience overcomes him, culminating in Davian counting to ten and seemingly shooting Julia dead.

We don't see the bullet fire but we hear it, after which J.J. Abrams cuts immediately to the splashy opening titles.

Beyond its gut-wrenching intensity, it also brilliantly swerves audiences who will be expecting the gunshot to be a fake-out when we see the scene again later in the movie.

But in fact, "Julia" does die, only for it to be revealed that this wasn't actually Julia at all but Davian's translator wearing a Julia mask. That's one hell of a double-swerve right there.