What a supreme waste of talent and my money.

Rating: 3/10 (27 May 2000)

What a terrific way to kill a franchise. Take everything that worked from the first film and replace it with slow motion shots of Tom Cruise doing back flips.
This is less a film than it is a monument to the amazing egos of John Woo and Tom Cruise. The brilliant break-in of the computer lab at Langley in the first film was included as a homage to the great heist film "Topkapi." Every scene in this film, however, was included as a homage to itself.
Get this: This evil Australian pharmaceutical company invents a killer super virus and its antidote, so they can unleash the former and sell the latter at an exorbitant price. But here's the catch: the virus kills the infected after 20 hours...which doesn't really leave too many people around to pay for the cure, does it? Hell, you come up with a bad cough and you'll be waiting in the doctor's office for half of that amount of time.
Or did I miss something form the "plot," which is entirely possible because the entire thing was told so poorly and with such confusion that I'm surprised I managed to follow any of it at all. Who the villain was, for example, or what were his motives was never explained even in the slightest. He was a rogue IMF agent, I guess...but didn't that happen in the last film too? What is it about the IMF team that makes its agents go not just crazy, but completely, absolutely psycho-Hitler style crazy? You'd think they'd hire a psychiatrist to give these people psycho-evaluations or something.
But it is illogical plot devices such as this that fuel bad action films, and that is just what this film is. It's really unforgivable, really, considering the supreme talent that was involved.
But, Donald, you might be thinking, what do an intelligent plot and engaging characters have to do with a kick ass action movie? If the action is there (and, for the most part, it is. The action sequences in this film are really top drawer) then the film is a success, right? Wrong, not when the film in question comes from a pedigree such as this, where an intelligent plot and engaging characters are the norm and should be a given. The first movie and the original series deserve better than this. Tom Cruise proved himself to be a great producer with the first MI, hiring DePalma and some great actors to create as witty, exciting, and suspenseful a spy thriller as Hollywood has ever scene. But in this film he hired an over the top director with little to no experience with the genre and some great actors, sure, but with absolutely nothing to do.
You might question why Anthony Hopkins was hired to act in this movie for only about three minutes. Allow me to tell you why: Because only an actor of his caliber could deliver lines like, "This isn't Mission Difficult, this is Mission Impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park," and *not* have audience members jumping from their seats, out to their cars where they'll either go to Blockbuster to rent the first film or straight home to catch an episode of the original series on TV Land.
This movie sucked, pure and simple, and had as little to do with the first film or the original series as I am to Hercules. Gone was the brilliant interplay between the ensemble cast. Hell, gone was the brilliant ensemble cast. Emilio Estevez had more screen time than the third member of Ethan's team (that australian guy) had in this one.