Mission: Imbecilic

Rating: 5/10 (28 August 2001)

John Woo's "M:I 2" is, in many ways a well done action picture, but unfortunately, an insult to the "Mission: Impossible" name.
It almost seems as though somebody carefully watched all the old episodes of the TV show, and the original movie, and specifically disregarded all the elements that made it so famous... and great. For example, the IMF, the team that worked together through ingenuity and teamwork, has been scrapped in favour of Tom Cruise going solo. Another appealing element of the original M:I was the way in which all missions were accomplished through inventions and situations that seemed far-fetched and realistic at the same time, but in M:I 2, this too is forgotten in favour of 'magic' face and voice changers, that can somehow turn absolutely anyone into absolutely anyone else.
Another appealing feature was the way the team consisted of gritty hardworking people, just trying to get the job done, and not worrying about how they looked doing it. John Woo's vision of Ethan Hunt is almost the exact opposite, it often looked like the chase scenes were straight out of a shampoo commercial, and the "scars" looked like they were applied by Estee Lauder.
In the famous motorcycle duel scene, I couldn't stop thinking about how a member of the original crew would most likely just pull a head fake and double back and run the guy over after he flew off his bike, or just shoot the guy when, near the end, he is caught without a weapon (John Woo opted to have Ethan throw down his weapon. I guess his thinking was: The enemy died, but at least he died thinking "Wow, Ethan, you fight with honour").