From De Palma to Woo

Rating: 6/10 (14 June 2006)

Every director has his own sense of style. Brian De Palma is a Hitchcock stylist while John Woo is pure action. With the first Mission Impossible, De Palma made it slick and intelligent with a very in dept story line and crafty action. Woo on the other hand makes Mission Impossible 2 a low key love story filled with explosions and boring dialog. Woo diverts all our attention away from the previous M:I's feel into a whole new setting with a whole new tone. With Woo's non-stop rush of adrenaline, he turns Ethan Hunt from a cool super spy into a hardcore daredevil.
Tom Cruise makes his return as Ethan Hunt, a spy who is on holiday climbing cliffs who happens to be called in on a very impossible mission. Seems as though a rogue IMF agent, played by Dougray Scott, has crashed a plane and kidnapped a top secret disease only known by it's name, Chemira. Hunt is assigned to enlist a jewel thief to help find out the agents plan. Along with Ethan comes his super hacker pal Luther Stickell, played ounce again by the brute of a man Ving Rhames. Together, Ethan must save the world and the girl who he has fallen in love with. Wait, a love story in a Mission Impossible movie? That's what Woo is giving us?
John Woo is a good director, I'll give him that, but he should have left this movie alone. Brian De Palma had already set up a clever spy franchise and Woo took it down within the first ten minutes when we see Tom Cruise scaling a cliff like he's Spider-Man. Ethan is totally different here than in the previous movie, looking like a regular Steven Segal poser. The acting is worse than part 1, total boredom. Woo, instead of entertaining us, bores us to tears. And the villain is horrible. The plot is a deflated idea used over fifty times and yet Woo decides to pump it up with air again and use it. The special effects, alright. We get some good CGi here and there, and an excellent shot of an knife about to stab Tom's eyeball out, but sense it's six years later after this movie was released, it's old.
The only real saving grace is the action. Woo throws in as many bullets and explosions as he can. We have a cool motorcycle chase, a glass room shattered to pieces with bullets, exploding sun glasses, and even a two man wrestling match atop a hill. Sadly, the action itself is either to slow or too fast and it looses it's willpower. The movie acts like a Dawsons Creek episode, a love triangle while death is involved. Sorry Mr. Woo but this movie was pretty bad. My advice to all the viewers out in the world, see Part 3. JJ Abrams made the best one, cooler then De Palma's and makes Woo's looks like trash. Mission Impossible 2 gets a 6 out of 10. C- on my grade.