Mission Impossible 2

In yesterday's post I discussed some of the problems I had with the film adaptation of the Mission Impossible television show. Again I feel i need to mention that I generally had no problem with the first movie in the end though. It has some glaring imperfections but underneath it all I think they were trying to make a goofy action film and they ended up making a goofy action film with an incredibly insulting plot twist to fans of the series. I also mentioned that I found the two sequels to be quite polarizing. Here we are at the first one and I can say without any reservations:

This movie is not any good.

The first red flag for this film was bringing in John Woo to direct. That sounds like a knock on Woo and in some ways it is. On the other hand though I have enjoyed a few of his American films but I think he falls into his familiar patterns to often and removes all the tension in an action sequence by giving everyone guns and then reducing the movie to a slow motion piece. Worse than that though is that Woo has a vast world at his disposal as far as weapons go in a vaguely futuristic society and instead relies on staples of the action movie genre resorting to a computer over and over again. All those factors combined remove any emotional attachment from the film to the point where the characters fates don't matter. It's especially troubling when the film is asking us to sympathize with Thandie Newton's character throughout. By the time she injects herself with the virus it almost feels like you want her to just die and get it over with.

The script is a let down too as it doubles down on the Ethan Hunt character at the expense of everyone around him yet it somehow finds a way to even further minimize the rest of the team. Ving Rhames spends most of his time looking at a computer screen watching what is happening as if he is a viewer surrogate. Newton is given nothing to do throughout other than wear cutoff shirts. Dougray Scott, usually pretty great, just plays a stock villain here and is given a lame plan and is then underwritten on top of it.

The action tries to look great and they only really succeed in the opening sequence with Hunt climbing through the mountains. Other than that it is just variations on pieces from the first film including using something similar to Ethan rappelling into the building. It just feels like the film has no ideas to put forward and is instead just daring the audience to not like it. I can hear the studio suits saying, "They saw the first one and this will be pretty much the same film."

There is really nothing to say about the film beyond that. It's a film with little to no character development that has a villain with a silly plan and no real good guys to speak because even Ethan is willing to let Nyah take some abuse for the greater good. Luckily for viewers the series got much better with the next entry.