It’s lighthearted and casual, and even though the stakes are typically ridiculous they’re believable and legitimately stressful.

Michelle Monaghan and Phillip Seymour Hoffman add incredible verisimilitude and gravitas, qualities that are missing from every single subsequent film.

The movie closes as if the series was expected to end, and it sort of did. All the subsequent films have a completely different veneer of seriousness and melodrama that this one manages to avoid.