Mission Impossible II

D

Directed by Jon Woo

Although the badness of "MI:II" had been foretold via the voices of hundreds of critics and millions of unsatisfied moviegoers upon its release in 2000, when it showed up on "Movietime" over the weekend, I decided to give it an impartial and (mostly) objective shot. After all, the venerable Jon Woo, director of such action epics as "The Killer" and "Hardboiled" was behind the wheel which, in my naive view, equalled close to guaranteed success or at least acceptable mediocrity. Unfortunately for me--but most unfortunately for Woo, really--"MI:II" is a bad, bad action film that takes some of the more questionable decisions of the first film in the series to new, ridiculous lengths while retaining none of the excitement and novelty of its predecessor.

"MI:II" opens with our favorite international spy, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), free climbing a mile high rock formation in the middle of the desert. After avoiding several near death experiences (in the span of thirty seconds) and conquering the beastly boulder he is met on its summit by a circling helicopter which plants a canister near his feet. He opens it to reveal a pair of sunglasses that, you guessed it, are programmed to give him the details on his newest mission (should he choose to accept it) and also designed to self destruct in five seconds (which I would have liked to see happen when the glasses were still on Tom's face). Turns out a deadly virus has been swiped from a Russian scientist by a group of nefarious individuals who wish to infect the population of Australia (why the Aussies? What did they ever do to anyone...besides the aboriginals) and then make their cash by selling the antidote to a local bio tech firm. Tom doesn't like the sounds of that so he sets off to foil their plans, with the help of rent-a-hottie Thandie Newton. A cat and mouse game filled with lame action and lamer gadgets ensues.

"MI:II" fails on basically every front where the original "Missions Impossible" succeeded. The international intrigue lacks credibility, the chemistry between the leads is non-existent and the action is boring which, for a Woo directed movie, is absolutely criminal. "MI:II" is also guilty of taking the least credible parts of "MI:I," particularly the use of lifelike masks of other character's faces as tools of misdirection, to ridiculous extremes. Faces are ripped off to reveal other faces at such a quick rate it reminds me of an old episode of the animated TV series "Sam and Max" where the two characters spend about a minute ripping masks off of their faces one after another only to finally reveal that Max is in fact Sam and Sam is in fact Max. Whereas in "Sam and Max" the effect was supposed to be funny, in "MI:II" it's supposed to be completely serious and this, in and of itself, is hilarious. As far as the actions sequences go, I'm surprised that Woo wasn't able to pull off something even semi-decent, seeing as how most of his previous films, even his lesser efforts, usually contained original actions sequences. I blame it on the lack of gun play. As Clint Eastwood once said, the key to good action is all in the gun play and Woo seems most comfortable when he has a protagonist(s) with an endless clip running around a cramped building unloading casings left and right. In "MI:II" Woo is forced to contend with the relative absence of guns and conjure up action in the form of gizmo play as opposed to gun play. Success, I suppose, was not in the cards.
I always genuinely want to watch movies that have been critically panned and find something good in them that I feel was missed. Unfortunately, in almost all cases films that are given a collective thumbs down by critics were savaged for a good reason and "MI:II" is no exception. My disappointment in "MI:II" is only heightened by the fact that I didn't even expect the film to be good, only decent, mindless entertainment. Even in that regard Woo's film couldn't deliver. I blame Tom Cruise.