Mission: Impossible 2
| Year: | 2000 |
| Studio: | Paramount |
| Director: | John Woo |
| Producer: | Tom Cruise/Paula Wagner |
| Writer: | Robert Towne/Bruce Geller |
| Cast: | Tom Cruise, Dougray Scott, Thandie Newton, Richard Roxburgh, Ving Rhames, John Polson, Brendan Gleeson, Radé Sherbedgia, Anthony Hopkins |
This movie is an ill-advised sequel to the far superior Brian de Palma original. Both producer Cruise and director Woo seemed to want to change hero Ethan Hunt into a scowling, monotonal Terminator-figure. Just watch the dark glasses and impassive expression.
The plot is some tosh about Hunt travelling to Sydney to track down a toxic weapon agent, but while there he manages to bag and shag the hot girl (Newton) and conscript his old buddy (Rhames) into the fray.
Woo does more than Lara Bingle to make Sydney a beautiful tourist's paradise complete with jugglers in the park and festivals everywhere but doesn't manage to nail any of the iconic sequences that made the predecessor so original and distinctive, such as the CIA clean room NOC list heist.
It has too much ballet and too many orgasmic slo-mo's, and while that's fine for a certain style of movie, it strayed too far from the thematic and tonal rules of De Palma's version and could have starred any action hero archetype without embarrassing Cruise so much.
And that's without the at-times comical set pieces. Who'd mistake pint-sized Cruise for the willow-like Roxburgh?
The plot is some tosh about Hunt travelling to Sydney to track down a toxic weapon agent, but while there he manages to bag and shag the hot girl (Newton) and conscript his old buddy (Rhames) into the fray.
Woo does more than Lara Bingle to make Sydney a beautiful tourist's paradise complete with jugglers in the park and festivals everywhere but doesn't manage to nail any of the iconic sequences that made the predecessor so original and distinctive, such as the CIA clean room NOC list heist.
It has too much ballet and too many orgasmic slo-mo's, and while that's fine for a certain style of movie, it strayed too far from the thematic and tonal rules of De Palma's version and could have starred any action hero archetype without embarrassing Cruise so much.
And that's without the at-times comical set pieces. Who'd mistake pint-sized Cruise for the willow-like Roxburgh?