Mission: Disappoint everyone

Rating: Null/10 (19 June 2003)

There are no stars in Hollywood that could ever lay claim to making a career, comprised of only Good movies. The career of Arnie looked indestructible, until someone handed him the script of LAST ACTION HERO. Tom Cruise is one such star. He has made some great movies - TOP GUN, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, MINORITY REPORT - but for every TOP GUN, there is a DAYS OF THUNDER. After the huge success of the first M:I film, made in 1995 and seen by audiences far too young to actually remember the original '60s series, a sequel was inevitable, unless presumably, Cruise was suddenly killed in a freak accident. After much speculation about plot, writers, co-stars, and directors (including, shudder, Oliver Stone), John Woo was chosen to sit in the shouting chair. Woo seemed the perfect choice. He had breathed new life in the tired Western action genre with FACE/OFF, and his Hong Kong movies are jaw-dropping to say the least. A partnership with Woo, Cruise, and a hundred million dollars seemed like heaven. Shame it didn't work. Learning the lesson from the first film, writer Robert Towne (CHINATOWN), doesn't make the plot too complex. Was I the only one left in the cinema after the Brian de Palma original, scratching my head and wondering who was alive and who was dead and who was the double-agent and who was... However, the story is still pretty complicated. It involves a deadly man-made virus, which rogue MIF agent Sean Ambrose (Dougary Scott) wants to steal. Our floppy-haired hero Ethan Hawke (Cruise) is sent on his trail by a heart-attack inducing cameo by Anthony Hopkins. Hawke decides to infiltrate Ambrose's gang, by planting the villain's ex, Nya (Thandie Newton) by his side. Of course, the plot is just a skeleton for Woo and his special effects team to flesh some supposedly eye-popping action scenes on. There are some scenes which had great potential - the lab. shoot out in particular, but nothing quite hits the mark, mainly due to the frustrating amount of times slo-mo is used - we all know this (and doves) are Woo's signatures, but this time he really grinds it in the ground and in fact loses much of the drama because of it. The opening cliff-scaling venture is well done, and the duel to the death on the beach is exciting, but none of them have the rewatchability of, say, FACE/OFF or THE KILLER. Cruise's mullet is irritating to the point of hurling a petrol bomb at the screen, and although both Scott and Newton are good, there are seriously wasted. The script is dreadful - it is hard to believe that it was written by the same guy who wrote the classic CHINATOWN, but that's Hollywood, eh? This redefines the term 'missed opportunity.' A great director, a charismatic star, and a brilliant writer still could not make a passable movie. It is not that M:I-2 is woefully bad, like THE AVENGERS, but it is not a mark on the 1995 film, which wasn't perfect by a long chalk. M:I-2 is the worst a movie can ever be - mediocre. It will never rise to fame because of its ghastliness, and yet it will never be hailed as a cinema milestone.
Turgid, bloated and as disappointing as cinema has ever been, this must rank among HANNIBAL and THE MATRIX RELOADED as films that could have had everything, but chickened out at the last minute.