Bad, just bad

Rating: 4/10 (16 June 2015)

*WARNING MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS* The first Mission Impossible movie took an unexpected twist on the regular spy formula, and went in for investigation and suspense instead of action. This movie works more as a generic James Bond movie, think along the lines of Die Another Day. Tom Cruise goes from being the guy who is not skilled what-so-ever in hand-to-hand combat, to being... this. John Woo, the director, abuses slo-mo in this movie as well, making all of the fights... pretty boring actually. It's just watching slo-mo flips and kicks for the last half hour of this movie. If you look at the opening credits, the movie will make a lot more sense, because there you will see: produced by Tom Cruise. Okay, enough formless hating, let's sift through all the insanity, and talk about what does and does not work in this movie. Let's start with what does, because that's a much shorter list. Now, adding some action in was not a bad idea, maybe they might have handled it poorly, but we'll get to that in a minute. Adding in a villain was also a good idea, and making him an evil counterpart to Ethan Hunt was also a good idea, but once again, the execution was handled pretty poorly. I even think the idea of a genetic virus called Chimera could've been a good plot point, but... well, it wasn't. Now, I'd like to talk about what I always thought was the most glaring problem here, the complete change in styles. As I said, MI 1 was an intelligent investigation movie, and this is a rip off of James Bond movies. The two don't go together at all. And, yes I understand with the MI setup of different directors, you're going to have differences, but this movie isn't just directed differently, it's also directed badly. Also, let's be honest, this movie is little more than a Tom Cruise ego trip disguised as a real movie. And since Tom Cruise seems to think he has to just be some perfect agent or whatever, it's hard to connect to his character, especially when he's paired up with Thandie Newton, because the two have like the worst on screen chemistry. Dougry Scott, who plays the villain, does not give a good performance either, despite the fact that his character could've been a good villain. An evil Ethan Hunt? C'mon, how can you go so wrong with that idea? The plot, if you can call it that, seems like just a bunch of random events thrown together, and it is very confusing at times, but at the same time incredibly stupid, if that makes any sense. See, the first one was confusing, but this one just doesn't make any sense because it's so ridiculous. On one final point, I know that the first movie was very cheesy, and was just supposed to be entertaining, but this one doesn't have the lack of self-seriousness, it's like two hours of Tom Cruise going, "Oh yeah, I'm awesome!" Because, it's like they take all these ludicrous stunts seriously, so it's hard to have fun with the movie, aside from laughing at how bad it is. In conclusion, Mission: Impossible II is a bad movie, with a weak and under utilized cast, bad directing, a wasted story, and some very bad action scenes.