John Woo Fails Again

Rating: 1/10 (25 May 2000)

If you didn't enjoy Broken Arrow for its terrible direction, be braced for worse in Woo's latest attempt Mission Impossible 2. I thought the first installment of the two was okay, but as is the case more often than not, the sequel turns out worse. More than anything, Woo's style of slow-motion and extreme-angle shots would be cool if it wasn't taken too seriously. The music is way over the top (read: big music rise when man grabs a scarf...). The sound effects editing is equally as bad (a woman slaps a man in the face and it sounds like a 70s kung-fu kick). It would be fair to say that if you removed all of the slow-motion scenes in this movie, it'd be about 35 minutes long. However, Scooby-Doo fans will appreciate Woo's obvious tribute to lame plot-twists. This film is basically an excuse to show Cruise with wind blowing in his hair with a little smirk behind dark glasses (Matrix, anyone?). I don't care how many freakin' Kung Fu movies this guy's made: Every American film he's been involved in has sucked bigtime: Broken Arrow, The Rock, Face/Off, and most notably: Hard Target (poo!). Don't get me wrong: I wasn't expecting Shakespeare here...but there's no law stating that if you make an action movie, it has to be really unintelligent. Look at the original Bond films, for example. This has never happened to me before, but about twenty minutes in, I felt like I was in a movie theater, not involved in the story. I had to try to keep focusing on the screen and try to get into it, but I just couldn't. So in conclusion, if you like to be insulted as an audience member or feel like staring at a 40-foot-wide slow-motion extreme low-angle of Tom Cruise trying to be cool or acting tough, you're sure to get your eight dollars' worth. Oh yeah, an abundance of big explosions from three hundred different angles. Yawn.