director
John Woo
screenwriter
Robert Towne
story
by
Ronald D. Moore
Brannon Braga
based on
characters created by
Bruce Geller
producers
Tom Cruise
Paula Wagner
cinematographer
Jeffrey L. Kimball
music
Hans Zimmer
editors
Tony Ciccone
Steven Kemper
Eric Strand
Christian Wagner
cast
Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt)
Dougray Scott (Sean Ambrose)
Thandie Newton (Nyah Nordoff-Hall)
Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell)
Richard Roxburgh (Hugh Stamp)
John Polson (Billy Baird)
Brendan Gleeson (John C. McCloy)
Rade Serbedzija (Dr. Nekhorvich)
Anthony Hopkins (Swanbeck)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 123m
u.s.
release: 5/24/00
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other john
woo films
reviewed on this website:
- broken
arrow
- face/off
see also:
- mission:
impossible
- mission: impossible III
|
The
concept behind the Mission: Impossible movies is enticing:
Take a great director, a modern master of technique and thrills,
and put him behind the wheel of a big-budget Tom Cruise movie
-- Brian De Palma directed the first
one in 1996, and now John Woo (Hard Boiled, Face/Off) has helmed Mission:
Impossible 2. Well, it looks good on paper, anyway. Cruise,
the co-producer of these movies as well as the star, seems to
lose track of the reason he hired these directors in the first
place. In scattered moments you get flashes of the old De Palma
or Woo genius -- not quite enough to sustain you, but just enough
to frustrate you.
Mission: Impossible 2, I'm afraid, is yet another stubbornly
incomprehensible spy thriller very much in the James Bond mold.
In these movies, which are pointless to synopsize in any detail,
the good guy must prevent the bad guy from acquiring something
deadly or powerful. That's it. That's all they're about.
There is usually also an attractive woman, whom the good guy
must also prevent the bad guy from acquiring, and sometimes she's
deadly or powerful. But not enough, of course, to shadow the
hero. Oh, and there are stunts, and lots of meaningless running
around, and lots more meaningless exposition about the meaning
of all this meaninglessness, and yet more stunts.
Cruise's superspy hero, Ethan Hunt, must stop evil renegade agent
Dougray Scott before he can infect the population of Sydney,
Australia with a lethal virus. The villain's plan is to create
a demand for the virus' antidote, which he can then supply, for
an immodest fee. Ethan sends his new lady love Thandie Newton,
who was once involved with the villain, to go back to him so
she can spy on him. Since Cruise and Newton have zero chemistry
together, we're not especially moved by Ethan's turmoil and jealousy
when his lover ends up back in his enemy's arms.
Watching a cluttered, dawdling "adventure" like Mission:
Impossible 2, you may flash back on the relatively trim and
straightforward Indiana Jones movies, which had just as
much globe-trotting and a plot identical to the one I described
in the paragraph before last, but which also had pace and momentum.
M:I2 founders and drags -- the middle third is incredibly
dull -- and that's a shocker coming from John Woo, who's usually
an artist of propulsive, balletic violence. In earlier movies,
Woo's patented slow-mo passages -- Sam Peckinpah buffed to a
gleaming shine -- riveted our attention and forged beauty out
of chaos. Here, Woo just seems to fall back on slow-mo whenever
he gets bored, which apparently is often. The movie is never
bad to look at -- Woo knows where to put the camera --
but it's hollowly attractive. Even Woo's signature dove is just
a sad grace note here, a reminder of better films.
Tom Cruise may enjoy throwing himself into the sleek physicality
of these movies, but it doesn't do much for me. Ethan Hunt remains
a cipher, a wind-up action figure who can do damn near anything
short of flying. In the outlandish finale, he even does a little
of that. The climax is admittedly a jolt of caffeine -- it's
as if Woo were finally, finally being let out to play
after being locked inside Robert Towne's pedestrian script for
two hours, and he cuts loose. The stunts and collisions here,
like the best moments in De Palma's film, get you laughing at
their kinetic daffiness. But it's too little, too late. Towards
the end, some members of the audience didn't even wait till fade-out
to head for the aisle; others left silently when it was over,
and the audience throughout the film, indeed, was mostly silent.
Mission: Impossible 2 doesn't give us a whooping good
time; most of it feels static and self-indulgent. Cruise himself
seems to be having a blast, kicking and whirling in the sunshine
and fresh air; too bad he forgot to let the rest of us in on
his fun. |
