What happened?

Rating: 5/10 (25 May 2000)

I love John Woo. The mastermind behind The Killer, Hard Boiled, Bullet in the Head, and even Face/Off has created a very exciting, visceral, tense action flick in MI2. But that's it.
The action sequences are very cool and fun to watch, but they are all just typical "Woo-isms" we've seen before: the excessive slow-mo, the dive and shoot executed by Tom Cruise (and by Chow Yun-Fat millions of times before), the stunts and jumps that can only be explained by non-Newtonian physics, and of course the doves. When there is action, it is very fun.
Everything else, i.e. the plot, was forgettable. Before I went to see MI2, I knew nothing about the story. After I saw it, I understand why: The plot was not worth talking about. Robert Towne wrote the screenplay (from the story by Brannon Braga and Ronald D Moore). He also wrote Chinatown which is a masterpiece in itself. How did Woo and Towne collaborate on such a piece of crunk?!?
Trying not to spoil anything. The main storyline is Ethan Hunt (Cruise) has to figure why a former spy has defected. The side plot (or maybe this was supposed to be the main plot, I'm not really sure) is the blossoming relationship between Cruise and a professional thief played by Thandie Newton. One of the things that really spoiled this movie for me was the inappropriateness of this "love story." I have no problem with the existence of a love interest in an action movie, but it didn't work here. They focused on it too much, but then trivialize it at the same time. It had no meaning, it was just trying to put two attractive people together half-naked in bed. If they want to make the love story the main part of the movie, I needed more. I needed to know why they like each other beyond pure attraction. I want more cerebral dialogue between them. I want to know more. In Chinatown, I wanted to know more about Dunaway and Nicholson, and then the movie gave me what I needed. MI2 fails miserably. The rest of the plot is slightly familiar if you've seen Twelve Monkeys (sans time travel).
And of course there's the acting. How can you go wrong with Anthony Hopkins, Ving Rhames, and Tom Cruise of a very impressive outing in Magnolia and a pretty good outing in Eyes Wide Shut. Hopkins is in it for an very unimpressive 2 or so minutes. Ving Rhames had some funny lines, but was also a non-factor. Cruise had his moments, but the rest was filled over-acting or non-acting. To Cruise's credit, he did do most of his own stunts a la Jackie Chan.
A major disappointment I had was the target audience, or rather how they made the movie to target their audience. I hate this fact about 90% of studio movies anyway, but it was so blatant. The PG-13 rating so that kids can go see it without sneaking in. A Woo movie is supposed to be an R. Without the R, much of the violence loses it meaning. Watch Hard Boiled and The Killer, the violence in those two movies mean something, a certain poetry that many critics have accredited to Woo. Second, the inclusion of the love story seems to attempt to appeal to a larger female audience. And of course the fast cars, fast motorcycles, and fast draws of guns always draw the masses of men (18-49). Lastly, the fact that it is a summer movie. I'm sure if there was less pressure to open MI2 on Memorial Day (wednesday), there would be more time to make a better movie. Imagine if this was given three or four more months and opened in September. I have to wipe the tears from my eyes.
All in all, MI2 is not worthy of its predecessor nor its legacy. Mission Impossible is a better movie even if the story is convuluted (it was still intriguing). Most of John Woo's previous movies are by far superior (although Hard Target is a glaring exception). Go to see MI2, it's a fun action movie with exciting stunts and special effects. Don't see it again because the plot is horrible and the love story inane.