It wants to be The Matrix

Rating: 3/10 (24 May 2000)

When I saw the second sequence in which Tom Cruise, as Ethan Hunt, climbs cliffs in Arizona and leaps between them like Spiderman, I figured "hmm, this must be like one of those high tech holo-deck training thingies they must have in the IMF now." I was wrong. For some reason the audience is supposed to believe that these acrobatics can be performed by any human. And thus continues the movie.
This film was directed by John Woo, which was a great choice for the action sequences. Unfortunately, the movie itself didn't have much action in it until the middle of the movie, and the romance sequences between Newton and Cruise were very hollow and trite. The slow motion was overused, and the film was debilitated by the actors' tendency to overact to make up for an extremely weak script. The only shining moment in the acting department was Anthony Hopkins, who delivered his lines with good humor and life.
The team aspect of the Mission:Impossible series seemed totally lost. It seems Ving Rhames was only brought in for a few laughs and to be the guy sitting in the truck, while the other member of the team was the guy who flew the helicopter, while Cruise's Hunt was the superhero who scaled cliffs, did backflips, and flipped motorcycles while immolating the bad guys.
In conclusion, the movie seemed like a bunch of amazing action sequences overlapping a script that was a combination of a trashy romance novel, a world atlas, a comic book, and a cookbook. The characters performed feats from The Matrix, such as human mid-air collisions, but M:I2 didn't pull it off because it was happening in "real life" not a computer simulacrum.