In my opinion, this is still one of the worst movies of the new millennium!

Rating: Null/10 (4 February 2004)

Contains Spoilers!! Mission Impossible 2 is a film that suffered from the pretense that it believed it was a good film. Unfortunately, this moviegoer was tricked into thinking that it would be an 'unreal' film. How wrong I was, as I had a very negative experience, as I found it boring for the most part. I have to ask, why is that Hollywood cannot get the 'Mission Impossible' formula the way I like it?
The world's greatest spy, Ethan Hunt is partnering up with the beautiful Nyah Hall to stop renegade agent Sean Ambrose from releasing a new kind of terror on an unsuspecting world. But before the mission is complete they'll traverse the globe and have to choose between everything they love and everything they believe in.
I was truly disappointed in the direction that MI2 was given. John Woo (from the brilliant action thriller Face/Off), was the man in charge, and I believe he was the wrong man for this job. He really over did many things in this film. But the most overdone and frustrating part of the film for me, has to be the way Woo just had to keep showing things in slow motion. If Woo had done these shots a few times that would have been ok, but he had to do umpteen times.
However Woo got the right look to the film. The shots of the mountain tops, the Aussie landscape which included the outback and of Australian city, Sydney, really did impress me. Woo had cinematographer Jeffery L. Kimball doing this aspect of the movie, and visually I found nothing wrong to the film.
The same cannot be said for the script of MI2, which once again was disappointing. The story was the inspiration of Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga, different men to the first MI film. However the screenplay writer, Robert Towne was back for a second shot at this story. Unfortunately all these writers got this story totally wrong again. I believe this because of the crazy plot, which involves the silly virus, just not good enough. Then with this as the sole focus of the story, we get another story that becomes very complex, confusing and at times rather boring. Another complaint in this story has to be the character creations, which are pathetic, especially the bad guys, who are not convincing at all.
Main character of MI2 is Ethan Hunt (Producer Tom Cruise). As I have mentioned previously, Cruise certainly looks the part in these films, and while he was ok in the role of Hunt this time, I still think he needs more MIF members to help counterbalance the film's spy aspects. Hunt's mentor in the film is Mission Commander Swanbeck (Sir Anthony Hopkins), who was well casted in his small role.
The female lead in MI2 is Nyah Hall (the gorgeous Thandie Newton). She is a professional thief recruited to help Hunt on his mission. We learn that Hall used to be romantically involved with a defective agent. Nyah is asked to do a very dangerous job, one that could cost her life. Luther (Ving Rhames) is again an ok character, but he does not have a great affect on me. But a funny new man was Billy Baird (John Polson), who has a very over exaggerated Australian accent, but for some reason I did not mind that.
The bad guy here is a man by the name of the Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), who is not a nice man at all. He is driven to get his hands on this new deadly virus, and noting will stop him from getting it. Ambrose is a pathetic bad guy, poorly acted by Scott, as he did not get me overawed like a good bad guy can and should do. Ambrose's right hand man is also just as bad. His name is Hugh Stamp (Richard Roxburgh) and knowing that this guy is Australian, he has a terrible accent all the way through this movie.

MI2 has some good sequences and some very bad sequences. I enjoyed the start as it opened the movie up nicely. But after the race course scenes, the film gets lost in a rather boring sequence, where Hunt is trying to get a hold of the deadly virus guns. This scene is bad reminder for me, as it is just like the vault scene in the first MI film.
Yet the ending does make up for some of this film's short falls. The bike/car chase is really well shot, but unfortunately John Woo had to overuse the slow mo shots which ruined it for me a little. Then the final confrontation between Hunt and Ambrose was fine, up until a point where see a knife held extremely close to Hunt's eyeball. Now these shots are supposed totally thrill us as the audience, but once again they did not work on me.

I also want to give my opinion on this movie's marketing. I feel that it was crap the way that they made the film look so much cooler and better than actually was, mainly via its trailer. The whole glasses thrown at the screen really did build this film up, but in retrospect, I find it to be totally 'wanky'. I am now very careful not to get the right or wrong impression of a movie via its promotion and or trailer, mainly because of MI2.
I have learned that they are doing a Mission Impossible 3 very soon. As big a film as it will be, I will not be seeing it cinema, after the bad and bitter experience I had of watching this film in the cinema. I am unsure if I will ever like a Hollywood inspired 'Mission Impossible' film, because for some reason the powers behind each individual film does not do, what I relate to being in the MI story. I guess time will only tell.

CMRS gives 'Mission Impossible 2': 1 (BAD FILM)