Tom Cruise is back in a good, but not great sequel to the 1996 original.

Rating: 8/10 (1 June 2000)

Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible 2. Ving Rhames is back as well. They are joined by Thandie Newton, Dougray Scott, Richard Roxburgh, John Polson and an unbilled Anthony Hopkins and directed by action-master John Woo.
The bad guys, Scott and Roxburgh steal a virus and the cure and try to sell it to a pharmaceutical company for stock. They then plan to release the virus and make a lot of money selling the cure. It's up to Ethan Hunt and his IMF team to stop him.
And that's pretty much the extent of the plot, which takes an unbelievable amount of time to get going(almost 70 minutes). But then it's on for young and old as Woo lets loose for a solid 45 minutes of non-stop action, involving gun-play, motorcycle chases, explosions, hand to hand combat and, of course, Woo's trademark doves.
The first hour of M:I2 is a little slow, with a sub-plot trying to build a romance between Cruise and Newton and the masks featured in the 1996 original are back in abundance and are overused, often confusing the viewer as to what is actually going on. Whenever there's a plot twist that needs to be explained either Cruise or Scott just put on a mask. IMF is only briefly referred to at the beginning and even though Ethan Hunt has their full support he still seems to be on his own. Even with a screenplay from Robert (Chinatown) Towne, poor plotting is the biggest downfall of M:I2.
If you can get past this you can really enjoy yourself. No one does action better than Woo and although Rhames is pretty much wasted, Scott makes an interesting villian, and Cruise is an athletic and charismatic hero, and you really appreciate it when you see that it is actually Cruise doing the majority of his own stunts.
But the real star here is Sydney and even though there are too many establishing shots of the Opera House and the harbour bridge it looks beautiful. A great advertisement for Australia as a holiday and film making location.
Although not the best of the summer blockbusters(Gladiator is leading the pack so far) M:I2 is very enjoyable and definately worth the price of admission.
4 out of 5.