Fantastic! Better than Bond.

Rating: Null/10 (31 May 2000)

I saw MI:2 with a buddy Friday night, and we both LOVED it! I've read some mediocre reviews, but for my money, this was one of the best-filmed action movies of all time. The dialog was often silly, and the plot was infantile (though, no more so than a typical James Bond film), but the action scenes and camera work were pure poetry.
John Woo makes extensive use of his trademark melodramatic, slow-motion ballets of violence. We've seen these moves before, but they've never looked better than here. Even when he depicts Spanish Flamenco dancers, we don't really see much of their faces, but their shoes thunder into the wooden floorboards with violence and passion, while their dresses billow and whirl in a crimson haze through smoky, golden light. It's all beautiful and dreamlike. And speaking of beauty, no Bond girl has ever looked as exotically, achingly, mouth-wateringly beautiful as Thandie Newton does in this film.
And that incredible motorcycle chase!!! My god! Much more involving than the interminable Boat Chase scene in Face-Off; this time, Woo gives us a hero who can fire a gun with deadly accuracy, while spinning round-and-round in a scary, out-of-control, cliffside skid-out on the rear wheel of a bad-ass Triumph motorcycle. None of it was believable for a second, but I was on the edge of my seat with my mouth open the whole time. MI:2 was the Bond movie no one's managed to make up 'til now, and you MUST see it on the big screen; this is not a renter!
Fortunately, I rode my own motorcycle to the movie, so I got to play Tom Cruise on the way home, weaving in and out of traffic with the M:I theme music playing in my head. That was really silly and pointless, but boy did it feel good! Just like this movie.