Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) Review

"Mr. Hunt, this isn't Mission: Difficult, it's Mission Impossible.  "Difficult" should be a walk in the park for you."

-Mission Commander Swanbeck

When IMF (Impossible Mission Force) agent, Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), goes rogue, stealing a antidote to a powerful super-virus, with the intention of unleashing a plague upon the world, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is sent to stop him.  Ethan puts a team together, but is forced to include Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandie Newton), a professional thief, as part of his team.  Ethan and Nyah quickly fall for each other, but they soon learn Nyah was not recruited because of her burglary abilities.  She is Ambrose's ex-girlfriend.  To make matters worse, Ambrose has gone undercover as Ethan in the past, understand his methods, and knows what moves he will make before Ethan himself does.

What Works:

The biggest highlight of the movie is the 3rd act motorcycle chase and subsequent fight.  This sequence is just so over-the-top you can't help but enjoy it.  It's an utterly ridiculous, yet awesome set-piece and it really is a blast to watch.

While director John Woo's style may not fully work in the Mission: Impossible series, it does work in Ethan's raid on Biocyte.  The shootout, mixed with Ethan's jump to freedom, and the incredible music make this another fun, if extremely over-the-top, sequence.  

While the villain isn't particularly great, he is serviceable and a step up from Jon Voight in the first film.  Dougray Scott gives a decent performance as a villain with some emotional issues.  He works well enough and I enjoy that he is familiar with Ethan's mission tactics and how he predicts exactly how Ethan's Biocyte raid will play out.

Finally, I love Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell and I'm pumped he came back for this film and that they gave him more to do.  Watching him blow up cars is always a blast and he continues to be one of the best parts of the series.

What Sucks:

The first half of this film is pretty awful and the problems start with the romance between Ethan and Naya.  So, Ethan ruins one of Naya's jobs, then saves her from a car wreck, which he sort of caused, then they sleep together, and develop feelings for each other all in about the first 15 minutes of the film.  I just didn't buy this at all.  Naya wasn't developed nearly enough for us to care about her and her love triangle situation with Ethan and Sean.  To make something like this work, introduce Naya in this film and save the infiltrate the ex-boyfriend's crew plot for the 3rd film.  This was simply too rushed and I just didn't care.

While I enjoyed the action and surveillance scenes in this film, there simply weren't enough of them.  Like I said, the movie was far too focused on the love triangle aspect, which, again, I didn't care about.  I watch the Mission: Impossible movies for the action and espionage sequences.  Not the romance.  So not only were we given this uninteresting love story, we lost some of the things that actually make this series worth watching.

As I said above, John Woo's style does not fully work in this series.  While I liked it some of the time, generally it was too much.  All the slow-motion and flashy camerawork frequently felt distracting and was repeatedly taking me out of the movie.  Dial it back a little bit and focus on the substance, not just the sizzle.

Verdict:

Mission: Impossible 2 is a movie of highs and lows.  The first half sucks because of the forced love story, lack of interesting sequences, and unnecessarily, over-the-top style, but the movie improves as it goes on.  The raid on Biocyte and the 3rd act chase are both awesome, Dougray Scott is an acceptable villain, and it's great to have Ving Rhames backs.  This isn't a bad movie, but it's not good enough for me to recommend.

 5/10: Meh