A unique work of art

Rating: 9/10 (18 July 2001)

Mission Impossible 2 was not appreciated by the critics because it was not understood by them. As the culmination of the action epic - where the symmetry, usually found in poetry, is embodied by the violence - most modern cinema-goers were faced with something wholly new. The Western intelligentsia, still hung up on the 1960's false division of clever female creativity from brute male violence, could not appreciate the profundity and happy sanity which John Woo's action engenders.
The film opens with a panoramic view of the Moab dessert in Utah, before slowly focusing in on the small pinprick of activity which turns out to be Ethan Hunt (Cruise). As he struggles with the hot sandy surface of the perilous cliff face, one of the film's main themes is introduced: man's struggle to overcome fire and earth. Fire and earth being, since Biblical times, symbols of desire, pain and, ultimately, procreation. Yet the theme is not gendered: sometimes it is male, sometimes female. The violence of the Spanish dancers, dressed in red with their viciously clicking heels and aggressively sharp  though elegant  movements, celebrate feminine strength and sexuality. As Naya executes her robbery, the clacking of her heels on the stairs and her sudden pose against the wall mimics the actions of the Spanish dance, thus her union with Tom Cruise on the cliff face, as their two cars, pinned together, pirouette towards dusty death, unifies the creative energy of the feminine Spanish dance with that of masculine danger. They become lovers.
Hunt is obliged by his master' to give her up  to pimp her  and thereby entrap the villain. At this point, the theme of fire and earth mutates as the pain, rather than the desire of its fecundity is explored. This is visually conveyed by the horse image which begins to dominate  quantitatively and as well as qualitatively  over the earth image. Naya is described by the villain, Ambrose, as a possible Trojan horse'  referring to the danger lurking behind her desirability  and the next scene is of horse-hooves churning up the race-track: a sinister mutation of the rumbling castanets and clacking heels of the flirtatious Spanish dance scene. Naya becomes a pawn as the film delves deeper into violence, and eroticism becomes secondary or is subsumed into the beauty of explosive male confrontation. Naya becomes less important while the arch enemy, Ambrose, becomes more so. There is nothing salacious about this substitution of a female for a male combatant on the part of Hunt: a Freudian interpretation, while being a valid exercise in risky thinking, adds nothing to our understanding. Instead of the tender mating ritual of the car chase, we have the bitter sparring ritual of the motorcycle chase: the two are similar in that they involve danger and heightened passions.
The full-frontal motorcycle confrontation is the culmination of the horse image: it is a modern day joust, where the horses have become machines. The animal of the horse is civilized or contained within the sphere of technology, just as the film  with all its technological innovation  masters and is able to express through it's artistry otherwise uncontrollable inexpressible forces. Like the Spanish dance and the car chase with Naya, Hunt's action scenes have a primal, yet also cosmic, elegance. When he is kicking his gun from the sand with a sharp tap-dancing manoeuvre, pirouetting on the wheel of a motorcycle, or spinning away from gun-fire amidst exploding glass and red flames, the paradoxical creativity of violence is suggested. Explosions occur and the camera pans out to afford a view of their blast radius, dwelling upon  and thereby suggesting the beauty of  these scenes of chemical destruction. John Woo, through these explosive images, reminiscent of the origin of the universe (the big bang) is thus able to suggest one of the central paradoxes of creation: how life and creativity began in violence.