Noisy nonsense which isn't enough fun

Rating: 4/10 (30 December 2014)

I love action movies, but I need a plot to enjoy them properly. Mission Impossible II has little plot. It's something to do with Tom Cruise's superspy trying to destroy an engineered virus. Aside from a romance sub plot there's little other plot. Mission Impossible was a boring spy thriller with a convoluted plot, but the sequel is even worse. Watching MI2 was a very detached experience. There's nothing to invest yourself in or latch onto in this movie. It's just loads of action set pieces with no plot or characters. Tom Cruise is incredibly boring and his character can do anything, so therefore isn't interesting at all. The action itself peaks early on with an impressive rock climbing sequence. From then on, the set pieces are highly artificial and often don't make any sense. Dramatically listless, blank and devoid of a human touch, MI2 is a film watching experience that has absolutely no impact whatsoever and hits about as hard as a soft feather pillow to the face.
The film is admittedly well made and it's certainly not unwatchable, but it's difficult to pay attention to it. John Woo remains an accomplished and skilled director of action, but the action in this movie doesn't always suit him. He's better at shootouts and the car chases feel fairly ordinary. The film is trying its best and its target audience will mostly love it. The film requires a certain mood to be able to appreciate it, and cynical viewers may just switch it off out of boredom. A well made action film with plenty of visual splendour, but it comes up short on the screen writing front. Mission Impossible 4 was a good action film but that was because it actually had a plot and there were stakes. At least you could understand what was going on. Here, it's just noisy incoherence. The first MI movie failed because it spent too much time on boring dialogue and not enough action. Here, there's plenty of action but it doesn't deliver. It's difficult to get action films right when the lead is a zombie with muscles. I'm not too hyped about Mission Impossible 5.
4/10