MI2

Mission: Impossible 2

2000

Director: John Woo

Stars: Tom Cruise, Dougray Scott, Ving Rhames, Thandie Newton

A rogue Impossible Mission Force (IMF) agent (Scott) gets hold of a lethal virus and it's up to Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team to stop him.

Coming off the smash hit Face/Off and armed with his largest budget to date, John Woo crafts his take on the cult hit TV show. The filming was a tough process that ultimately brought forth another solid film from Woo. MI2 isn't perfect by any means, but there's lots of good things about it. To begin with, the movie looks great; the editing and cinematography are quite well done, except for a few instances where it was clearly trimmed to cut down on the violence. The action (as could be expected from a John Woo film) is very good. However, MI2 is a PG-13 movie, (so, as you might guess from my above comments) don't expect a lot of bloodshed -- but there's still plenty of dual gun action and slow-mo to keep all the fanboys happy.

MI2's main problem is its' script. There is an almost gross overuse of certain plot gimmicks from the first film (such as the seemingly magical masks that appear throughout the film). Perhaps even more detrimentally, there's very little development of the characters. In fact, some of them just seem unnecessary. I really wish Woo would start using his own scripts again. His US films have been exciting to be sure, but they all lack the emotional power of his earlier works like The Killer. At any rate, MI2 is a good summer "popcorn" movie that provides a good two hours of escapist entertainment -- at least it's not as damn confusing as the first one.

RATING: 7.5

A review for the DVD for this movie can be found here

Click here to look at my MI2 picture page, which also has Windows wallpapers

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