Every Mission Impossible Villain Ranked From Worst To Best

The character of John Musgrave, a traitorous Government agent assisting the movie's big bad in the much underrated third instalment of the MI franchise, would have worked so much better if it hadn't been done so many times before. The inside agent who goes rogue had already been overused by this third entry, meaning a potentially good twist late in the piece is seen a mile off.

It's a great shame, as Billy Crudup does an excellent job portraying Musgrave in a manner that casts him as a generally helpful agent with a pleasant demeanour. A scene where Musgrave is complicit in Ethan Hunt's escape from capture is a ripper and does temporarily cast him in a good light. Thanks to Crudup's performance it is easy to see why Hunt and his team would have not had suspicions about his motives, even if it is abundantly clear to anyone who has seen any spy film that something was up.

Director JJ Abrams tries to lead us to believe that Lawerence Fishburne's CIA chief Theodore Brassel is actually the insider, but it's signposted far too unsubtly for that to be the case. Having Musgrave explain his motives and the story's plot points to Hunt in a final expository speech also does the character a disservice, while having the fully trained agent being taken down by a nurse who had never previously used a gun before is also quite weak.