No surprises

Rating: 2/10 (5 November 2001)

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I expected nothing of what I expect from a good movie, like a story or believable characters. The hype around this movie was overwhelming, and all you saw in previews was split-second long bits of action sequences.
I didn´t know a thing about the story, and hey, why should they have told me of it anyway? The virus story was just a way to connect the cheesy action and to bore me to death. I usually don´t foresee even obvious twists in the story, but when there was only one injection left, I knew some good guy would be infected and the next step would be to get the antidote. I don´t mind plotholes (Matrix was full of them and I still loved it), if the rest makes up for it. I never saw the old series, but I saw the first Mission Impossible movie, and that one had a story. It was clever and confusing, which made it interesting. MI2´s story was just dumb, pointless and boring.
Same thing applies to the characters. Cruise is Cruise, all right. But did he really HAVE to pretend he was James Bond? The chick was just a chick falling in everlasting love with Cruise in no more than a second, the "team" could have been played by the computer and the bad guy, he just sucked, he had no charisma.
Last thing, the action. I believe that action itself is boring, unless it is really impressive and shows you something you haven´t seen a hundred times before. I liked the scene in the first movie where Cruise was hanging from the ceiling, not being allowed to touch the ground. It was so quiet in the theater, you could hear the people breathing. In MI2, there was just the fast-and-loud action that doesn´t allow any details. And the guy-and-chick-car-chase-on-mountain scene, tell me in how many James Bond movies we saw that before. *yawn*
2/10, for the car exploding on the bridge and the girl´s t-shirt.