Better than the original, but not by much

Rating: Null/10 (26 May 2000)

I was a serious MI fan, back in the 60s. The intricate plots and the cool gadgets. Not to mention split-second timing.
The first MI movie dropped all of that for a weird post Cold War story. It was not an MI story.
This one was, closer to the spirit of the original. And John Woo certainly wowed me with the choreography of some of the action set pieces.

But the characters remain flat. Upon checking the Internet Movie DB, I found that Ving Rhames had played the same character in the first MI movie. I don't remember any characters from the first movie other than Ethan Hawke (Cruise) and Jim Phelps (Jon Voigt). And I only remember Voigt's character because that was the only one from the series.
I always figured that Robert Towne's name on the first movie was basically as a script doctor. His uncredited listings in the IMDB seem to indicate he's done a bit of this.
"Script doctor, heal thyself!"