Woo turns Hunt into Bond

Rating: Null/10 (16 June 2000)

With all the hype about Mission: Impossible II and all the action and adventure, does anyone really remember that this was originally the most sophisticated spy-tv show around in the 1960's? Do they remember that it was about unfolding plots and secret espionage and real characters?
No, I think not.
Mission: Impossible II bares little resemblance to it's predecessor, which I found a guilty pleasure and intriguing, despite it's convoluted plot. This time around, John Woo takes over the reigns as director from Brian De Palma and turns it into a visual rollercoaster of action and stunts that will surely win over audiences (partly because they can't remember how good the original series was).
The story involves a deadly virus called Chymera (spelling?) that was accidentaly created by a pair of Russian scientists that work for Australian pharmaceutical giant Biocyte. To avoid spoilers, I must skip certain elements of the story. Anyway, an evil ex-IMF agent called Sean Ambrose is out to steal the virus and the antidote, thus infecting people with the devastating disease and forcing them to pay for the cure. Meanwhile, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is given the task of stopping Ambrose with the help of Sean's ex-flame, and Hunt's now-flame, Nyah Hall (Thandie Newton). She is to "infiltrate" Ambrose's scheme by restarting her relationship with him and feeding information to Hunt. Ethan also has the help of IMF agents Billy Baird (John Polson) and Luther Stickwell (Ving Rhames, reorising his role from Mission: Impossible). Soon, Hunt and his team are racing against the clock to stop Ambrose and to save Nyah, who is in great peril.
Now, its pretty useless that Cruise plays Ethan Hunt in this film: he resembles practically in no way the character from the first film. In Mission: Impossible, Hunt was a cold, edgy point man who was vaunerable but smart. He wasn't unstoppable, but he had guts and fury in his blood. In Mission: Impossible II, Hunt is basically James Bond: super slick, super cool, he immediatley gets the girl and has tons of explosive toys to use in dispatching Ambrose and his team. Not only that, but he has become a martial arts wizard who is basically a one man task force. When infiltrating a business deal with Ambrose and the Biocyte CEO, he goes through waves and waves of guards with acrobatic moves, hardly breaking a sweat. Hunt is an entertaining character but is nothing like the one we saw in the first film. Then why label this a sequel? Well, the first one made about $452 million and has a catchy theme song so why not take advantage?
This film also has a confusing plot, although not nearly as much as the first one. It involves a lot more of the brief "masking" that we saw in Mission: Impossible and it becomes very predictable and even rediculous. I won't spoil it, but in one scene where a mask change takes place, it is evident that Hunt would have had to brought a mask for himself and another character and a voice-changer for that character to an event in which he is not sure will happen or not! And the voice changers too! It is a little over-the-top rediculous that a microchip strip (like a piece of tape) across the vocal cords can manipulate your voice to that of anyone (like the voice-changer in Scream 3). If you remember the scene in Mission: Impossible where Hunt is disguised as Jim Phelps (Jon Voight, the bad guy), he does not say a word. How could he? He is still just Ethan Hunt wearing a mask!
Also, this sequel feels just like a vehicle for Cruise to look cool and blow things up nicely. Sure, with a huge star like Cruise almost any film with him is a vehicle but remember Mission: Impossible's fine supporting players?: Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Beart, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emilio Estevez (who actually works well), Vanessa Redgrave, Jean Reno and Ving Rhames (who had a much better role in the first one). I felt that Rhames was wasted as Stickwell, who offered very small comic relief and who's main purpose was to jump out of an exploding van, run all over Sydney searching for Nyah at Hunt's command or "getting pissed" because "someone put a hole in my Versaci." The cast in the sequel is good: Thandie Newton stands around looking either bravely defiant or innocent and scared, which she does very well, and Dougray Scott is a pleasant surprise as the nasty villan. Anthony Hopkins is perhaps the best as he takes over the job as Hunt's IMF chief.
But these multiple shortcomings are more than made up for woth the action. Oh, the action of John Woo. When Hunt executes his high-tech invasion of Biocyte, Woo turns the dogs loose in a blazing twin-barrelled fire fight that is absolutley thrilling. While I was kind of irked to see Cruise playing super cool through the rest of the movie, when the action came, I reveled in the magnificence. And how cool he is: kung-fuing his way through enemies, throwing grenades with ease and the end motorcycle chase. WOW. Hunt takes off on a motorcycle and two or three SUVs filled with Ambrose's nasties follow, along with Ambrose on a chopper of his own. The SUV drives across a small bridge, where it is met by Stickwell's gunfire. The SUV explodes and takes some of the bridge with it. And from the fire, we see Hunt, super cool, flying through the flames on the cycle. WOW.
So, expect something quite different from the original film and in my opinion, something not as satisfying. But if you are looking for something to hold you over until the next 007 film, this is the ticket. Most of the film barely works, if at all, but Woo puts on quite a show. This film puts him up there with today's best American action artists: Spielberg, McTiernan, Cameron and Donner.