Not a bad film, a bit under rated.

Rating: 6/10 (13 January 2008)

I first watched this not long after it came out around about 2000. Back then my taste in films had yet to develop into what I now pride myself on. I enjoyed it back then. Great stunts, straightforward pop corn action story, good closure. I watched it again a few years back too and noticed a few more flaws that had gone past me before. From that point on I decided that this film was not a good film at all.
My wife had asked me several times to buy the mission impossible trilogy as she had never saw them and was a Tom Cruise fan. I finally done this last week. We watched MI and throughly enjoyed it. I mentioned to her I was looking forward to MI3 but did not fancy sitting through MI2 again as I had saw it before and it appeared to be the weakest of the trilogy. Well...we watched it last night and I must say my opinion has changed again! This story is stupid. The script is wooden and Dougray Scott makes me cringe when I hear his Scottish accent on screen (not unusual for a Scotsman to cringe at his own accent!). BUT - the action is superb. John Woo makes for a completely different feel to the first film. This is a pop corn movie. Don't expect witty dialogue or the European feel to the first film. This is brain dead shoot em up material and its actually quite good.
If your going to watch the trilogy then give this a try. Its not supposed to be real, after all its a suspension of reality (like most action films). Take it for that, ignore the poor script and you might just have a nice time watching it. Also, maybe its top flaw is the running time. 90 mins would have been spot on here. Instead we have close to 120 mins. I haven't saw MI3 yet - thats for tonight's viewing, but after watching this I am actually looking forward to it now.
6/10