Expression of Absolute Disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (25 June 2000)

The first Mission Impossible movie was a smart, interesting, well-crafted look into the IMF through the magic of the movie camera for the first time. It excelled where TV had failed - with edge-of-the-seat suspense, with special effects that only cinema can provide, and a plotline that would never have passed a TV network's damning gaze (It was NOT an impossible plot to follow - only innovatively twisted and required, originally, thought to understand.)
Of course, I was looking forward to the sequel, and I finally saw it yesterday. Wow, what an utter disaster of a movie that was crafted this time around. First of all, this has no sense of continuity to the first movie or the TV series - there is no Impossible Mission team, no smart Impossible Mission, really, and no sense of suspense that drew people to the Impossible Mission series in the first place. This is Broken Arrow II, if you like, but not IM. The promise of the first IM's last scene, when you realise that Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is going to be the head of his IMF team, is thrown out the window.
Instead, we've got an action-shmacktion here-is-the-plotline-laid-out-so-my-four-year-old-son-can-follow-it-look-out -Ethan! plot that ruins the movie (hence the suspense dies very quickly after the first grappling scene). We've got a case of Matrixitis, as if John Woo spent a few too many nights watching the Matrix after 12 hour shoots in the Australian desert and decided to have Ethan Hunt "know kung-fu". We've got ridiculous, over-the-top explosions and under-the-covers romantic undertones that seem forced and uninspired. We've got a female lead that starts out strong and spends the last hour and a half of the movie whimpering and annoying and weak (their depiction!)
How unfortunate this movie tried to be so much, when we would have been happy with the real Mission: Impossible II. For this isn't your Dad's/Mom's/Sister's/Brother's/Anyone's MI. It doesn't even deserve the name.