What happened?

Rating: 4/10 (27 May 2000)

What was this movie? It wasn't Mission: Impossible. It was kind of like a very poor attempt at James Bond, with a little more kung fu thrown in for good measure. The only problem was, apart from the action sequences -- and I will confess that John Woo directs some very inspired fighting sequences -- this film had no point. Why was it made? Why did Tom Cruise allow this script to be filmed? And why did he buy into the very popular misconception that John Woo knows anything at all about directing a coherent film in the English language? Let's look at this closely, shall we?
Mission: Impossible belongs to the spy-thriller/espionage genre. If you take a look at the previous film or the television series, I think you will find them easy to classify. This...well, this was some kind of weird hybrid, save the world, over the top action, explosion, car chase extravaganza. I don't know how to classify this. All I know is that this wasn't a spy movie. It had nothing at all to do with espionage.
But perhaps more than anything, however, the success of the Mission: Impossible franchise relies upon the interaction of the ensemble casts. Sure, Cruise was the obvious star of the original film, but he would have been nothing without great support from the likes of Ving Rhames, Jean Reno, and Emmanuelle BÃ©art, all of whom played integral roles. Who the hell did he have in this movie? Okay. Ving Rhames is back, but why? He was a piece of furniture, placed in the film to make a joke here and there about wardrobe or sheep dung. That Australian guy? Who was he? I don't even know his name, that's how unimportant he was. Anthony Hopkins? Why was he in this movie? And how much did they pay him for his 3 minutes of screen time? Thandie Newton was actually quite good in M:I-2, but like all the characters, she wasn't a person. Just somebody for Cruise to react to. The relationship between them was entirely unconvincing, and more than once, she simply served the function of a catalyst for some sort of future action which would, undoubtedly, make no sense.
Woo wanted to give Mission: Impossible a heart? Then why are all of the characterisations so poorly done? The villain is just a raving lunatic and everybody knows it. John Voight's disgruntled and unappreciated civil servant mentality from the first one made more sense. Why in hell did IMF use Ambrose to double for Ethan Hunt? They had to know he was unstable. Cruise is super-man. He can do anything. No longer is he the smug spy that he was in the original film. He's Jet Lee. He's Chow Yun Phat. He's anyone but Ethan Hunt. Woo never really even attempts to establish a believable character or limits for this character. The whole rock climbing scene? What does this say about Ethan Hunt? Please. Don't get me started.
And the whole thief with a heart of gold thing has been done better about a million times. I have no reason to believe Nyah would fall in love with Hunt, and Woo doesn't seem to care that he never bothered to explain how that happened.
The plot? Whatever. This movie had no plot. The only attempt anybody made at recapturing the espionage feel of the series, was the obvious rip-off of the Langley scene from the first film. In M:I-2, Langley happened to be Biocyte or whatever it was called) headquarters, but the scene completely fell flat. The suspense so deftly created by DePalma in Mission: Impossible is nowhere to be found, as Woo seems to just let his effects do the talking.
Not a horrible movie, but a tremendous let-down. Don't go into this film expecting Mission: Impossible. Go into it expecting a mediocre action film that really accomplishes nothing and basically serves no purpose in ever having been made.