Before we start, quick plug, I’ve got a new audiobook out, The First Ambassador to Crustacea. It’s a short science-fiction comedy about an ill-fated trip to a psychic crab planet. There’s action, heavily armed lobsters, and it’s narrated by the fantastic Joel Simler. The book is available for $3.99 wherever books are sold, and if you have Spotify Premium, it’s included in your membership! Ok, back to the re-review!
This Movie IS For:
- People who really like John Woo’s doves
- Fans of car chases where hot people stare at each other for far too long in the middle
This Movie is NOT For:
- Those who believe the plot comes first in a spy thriller
- Filmgoers who would rather not watch a 10-minute fight scene where people just circle each other with dirt bikes
Brief Review With Minor Spoilers:
I’m slowly working my way through the Mission Impossible series because I want to watch Dead Reckoning, but for some reason, my brain won’t let me until I’ve rewatched them all. You can read my review of MI:1 here. Now I’m looking at MI:2, clearly directed by John Woo, and filled to the brim with cartwheeling gunfights and doves… yes, all the doves. As a quick digression, John Woo believes doves are symbolic messengers of God (source), so they make prominent appearances in all his films. But enough about flying rats, let’s talk about the movie.
ENOUGH WITH THE DOVES
MI:2 seems to take itself far less seriously than MI:1, but I honestly can’t tell if that’s on purpose or just the film showing its age. The action scenes are over the top, the dialogue is trash, and there are so, so many closeups of Tom Cruise and Thandiwe Newton locking eyes—because how else were we going to know they wanted to bang? I laughed out loud in all the wrong places, but early 2000s action really was a special breed of film.
Much like the first movie, the acting performances are rough, but Tom Cruise finds his footing a little more in the character of Ethan Hunt. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still painful to watch any of the film’s quiet, brooding moments, but the first entry set the bar low. The other agents on Ethan’s crew are mostly forgettable, but that might just be me longing for Simon Pegg—only one more movie to go there.
Thankfully, the ensemble isn’t the focus, it’s the action. MI:2 has some spectacular fight scenes that feel kinetic and insane. Even the opening shot of Tom Cruise free-climbing in Utah was damned cool—if also a bit ridiculous. Unfortunately, the climactic fight has the worst motorcycle chase I’ve seen in a movie. There are a solid five minutes of two motorcycles circling and jumping over one another with enough schizophrenic jump cuts to nearly give me a seizure. Put shortly, it was bad. Speaking of directorial choices, just about every other scene has a dramatic camera rotating away in the sky while a main character looks at the horizon. It got to the point that I was worried about camera operators having vertigo; hopefully, someone checked them out.
Inexplicably, I still enjoyed this film more than the first. Maybe it’s because I believe Mission Impossible is better the farther away from reality it gets. Yes, there are no less than four scenes of agents ripping fake faces off, but John Woo was only 3 years removed from Face Off at this point, so I’ll cut him some slack. The acting isn’t great; the action is a mixed bag, but I laughed and don’t regret the two hours I spent with Ethan and the gang.
3/5 Stars – If you want big dumb action with camera operators who feel like they’re hog-tied to a carnival ride, this is for you
More info about how I rate things here.
Ashton Macaulay 