Mission: Impassable

Rating: 6/10 (14 November 2000)

From the crash-bang school of LOUDER IS BETTER comes this sequel to the latest Tom Cruise blockbuster, or the Big Movie Du Jour. Not that Tom's incapable of small films (okay, maybe he is), but making a sequel to a loud action film is about as overdone as.... well, making any sequels, frankly. And we all know how good those sequels can be, don't we? (Okay, Toy Story 2 notwithstanding.)
You remember Ethan Hunt of the Impossible Missions Force, don't you? Last time we saw Ethan, he was having a bear of a time keeping his team alive - and finding out if they were on his side or not. This time around, he's asked by his boss (an unbilled Anthony Hopkins) to recruit a thief (Thandie Newton) to assist in some covert viral espionage. Ethan thinks the girl's being hired for her thiefing skills, but turns out she's the former lover of the stereotypical Megolomaniacal Bad Guy (who, of course, is a former colleague of Hunt), Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott). Her mission, should she choose to accept it, is to reingratiate herself with him and find out what she can about a brand-new, man-made organic virus called Chimera, after the mythological beast. Whenever an action movie tries to be authentic, it incorporates some
All flash and pomp, this movie has plotholes you could drive a souped-up Hummer through. With a ear-shattering soundtrack designed to make you forget the story's a bunch of hooey, M:I-2 deftly distracts its viewer. (It's even more riveting on DVD, where the sounds are even crisper.) Why have a plausible plot twist when three or four explosions will do? Sure, I'm nit-picking. That's what I do. Critics (professional or amateur) pick nits. You could certainly watch this movie and be suitably entertained. I guess it always irks me when a movie takes 90 minutes of plot and stretches it to 120 minutes by using music and explosions. And that's not to say that the action scenes aren't elaborately and masterfully staged.
Some of the acting is really unbelievable, including Scott and even Cruise himself. It's one of those going-through-the-motions motion pictures, albeit the kind where the star is getting $20 million and relies on special effects to bail him out. Didn't these people bother to read their lines before rehearsal? Oh wait, I forgot - there's no need for Method acting when duelling motorcycles will do. And did I mention the love scenes? Who does Cruise think he is, Sean Connery? It's bad enough M:I parrots nearly all of the Bond films regarding the international locations and explosions galore, but now Hunt has to be the Casanova to end all Casanovas. Yes, I'm quite aware he's a hunk and all that, but let's remember - he's probably shorter than you. Being in front of a camera can add inches to your height as well as to your weight!
You might get the impression here that I wasn't too fond of this film. Au contraire, mon frere du cinema! While it's not Shakespeare, it's also certainly not Stallone. For that, I bestow copious kudos to the filmmakers, who decided not to completely dumb it down to us. And hey, if we would rather not be distracted by a tortuous plot, so be it. So enjoy: it's solid entertainment, not too bad for a sequel.