Directed by John Woo. Written by Robert Towne
Mission: Impossible II is what happens when you hand a race car driver the keys to your Ferrari and ask them to drive it like a Fiat 500.
It’s not without its pleasures, but as super agent Ethan Hunt makes his first return in what will be a decade-spanning franchise, the decision to hire John Woo, legendary Hong Kong action filmmaker, to follow up on Brian De Palma’s camp spy masterpiece Mission: Impossible makes for an unwieldy spectacle.
Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt, who’s called back from vacation to help catch a terrorist and secure the biological weapon he’s planning on auctioning. Ving Rhames also returns as Luther, tech wiz, and John Polson is Billy Baird, a local Aussie who’s mostly along to lend comedic heft by way of his unaffected outback manners.
As the movie’s token woman, Thandiwe Newton stars as Nyah Hall, a world-class thief who’s ostensibly recruited by Ethan for that reason, but is relegated to damsel in distress and what’s worse, to mostly be the subject of misogynistic abuse.
These flat and two-dimensional new characters are the works of Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga (story) and Robert Towne (script) and they’re ultimately what let Mission: Impossible II down. What’s on the page is already a bit weak.
Posing as terrorist Sean Ambrose, Dougray Scott and his henchmen are a sad and uncharismatic bunch, like some unfortunate boy band of men in their late thirties, and Anthony Hopkins hardly chips in as a government handler who pales in comparison to Henry Czerny as Kittridge in Mission: Impossible.
Cruise, reliable Tom Cruise, doesn’t even seem at home in this return as Hunt. He’s a man who does let a smirk play across his face but is ultimately a locked-in operative, yet he’s a little too smarmy here, and with Woo’s direction, much of Mission: Impossible II feels like what would happen if Hunt went down with a fever and his heat-stricken dreams conjured up an adventure that only resembles his usual exploits.
It’s all very conflicting to ponder, because despite all this, Mission: Impossible II is a great John Woo movie. Tom Cruise does flip-kicks, kicks guns into his hand, slides along the floor while firing those guns and a lot of it happens in slow-mo. At one point, Hunt and a foe charge towards each other while doing wheelies on motorcycles. Doves fly out of flames. It’s ridiculous and cool.
Woo has so much style, so much swagger, his way of directing so unmistakable and iconic that of course the movie would look like this, and anyone expecting less would be fools. Looking back now, at a time when studios only choose directors who’ll conform to a house style when it comes to their cash chows, it’s almost touching to see them let a visionary loose in their toy store.
Paramount will wise up or dumb themselves down in the years to come, depending on how you look at it, as Christoper McQuarrie has been assigned to direct the last four Mission: Impossible movies. Yes, it’s more tidy, aligned and tonally on point, but you you can’t tell me it’s more entertaining than what Woo conjures, be it motorcycle jousting, an eye’s reflection taking in Hunt stepping out of flames, the literal gunplay, or two people locking eyes from each their own car as they collide and spin towards the edge of a cliff.
With Mission: Impossible, Paramount did the right thing from the perspective of someone who loves the movies and those who make them. From the perspective of someone with a set idea of what a Mission: Impossible movie is and how it should carry itself… maybe they didn’t.
Mikkel Frederiksen 