John Woo leaves his stamp on his one Mission: Impossible film

Rating: 7/10 (25 June 2018)

I remember after seeing this film being very excited about what I though was going to be a unique action series where each installment would be directed by a distinctly different director who would leave their own unique stamp on the series. The first film was directed by master of suspense Brian De Palma and this first sequel in the series was directed by John Woo, the most famous of the Hong Kong action directors, who brings his "heroic bloodshed" type of story and action to this mega budget Hollywood production. Woo's best films, or at least his best known films, are "The Killer" and "Hard-Boiled," both stories about two men on opposite sides of the law, but who in many ways live parallel lives. The story here has echos of that sort of mano a mano battle between two ying and yang type of characters, but not to the extend as Woo's Hong Kong pictures. Now I'm writing this review couple weeks after having watched the film and I'm barley remembering the story, which kind of makes sense since according to co-writer Robert Towne (Star Trek writers Ronald D. Moore & Brannon Braga received story credit) said that much of the script was written around action scenes that Woo told him he wanted to be able to direct for the movie. What I do remember of the story is that Dougray Scott is the bad guy who has some sort of deadly bioengineered disease and it's up to Tom Cruise and Thandie Newton to stop him. Although it's not all that memorable of a story, and this was reportedly a conscious decision by the filmmakers due to the criticism of the first film received regarding it's overly complicated plot (which it was), but what is memorable about MI2 are Woo's directorial stylistics. All of his usual trademarks are presents; zooms, slow motion, people firing two guns, birds flying in slow motion, etc. and although the action is not nearly as wild as anything in "A Better Tomorrow Part II" or "Bullet to the Head," it's unmistakably a John Woo action scene. I remember being disappointed in the action at the time, but rewatching it now, I can appreciate all that Woo did bring to the film. Woo also brings a number of memorable non-gunplay sequences, including a car chase between Cruise and Newton early in the film, which plays out more like a dance than a William Friedkin or Walter Hill style of car chase, or the climactic fight between Cruise and Scott on as rocky seashore that's a wonderfully loopy genre mash-up; part Hong Kong heroic bloodshed, part spaghetti western, and part straight-up American fight scene. Woo's first cut of the film came in at three and a half hours, which is obviously not the film that was released, but how fun would it have been to see that director's cut of an epic length John Woo film with all the budget and trappings of a major Hollywood studio allowing him to indulge in slow motion tracking shots of big name stars in their sunglasses, or close-ups of clothings, or birds, or whatever else Woo felt needed to be added to build his sense of atmosphere and cool? The movie was also originally given a R-rating and had to have the violence edited down to a PG-13, which is another reason it would be fun to see Woo's three and a half hour crazy violent version of this film. And interestingly, Woo was not the first choice of director on this film. Cruise originally offered the job to De Palma, but he declined. The job then went to Oliver Stone, who if you remember has not always done heady dramas, but wrote come classic action films including De Palma's "Scarface" and Hal Ashby's "Eight Million Ways to Die" but Stone had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts when Cruise's ended up having to work an extended amount of time on "Eyes Wide Shut," directed by Stanley Kubrick, who was notorious for the length of his shoots. Overall, MI2 is absolutely a John Woo films, even if it's a bit watered down for mainstream audiences compared to his Hong Kong films, and although "Face/Off" is still Woo's best American production, MI2 is a solid credit to Woo's filmography and I would argue is better than "Broken Arrow." (I'm not mentioning "Hard Target" because I have a pretty big soft spot for that film and it may be my favorite of Woo's American films, even if I can't quantify an argument as to why it's a better film - maybe it was Wilford Brimley riding a horse in slow motion.).