My review of MI2, should you choose to accept it

Like the rest of my reviews, straight from <a href=http://nicktheshadow.tsx.org/>my board</a>.

PROS

John Woo = excellent direction and photography.

And this film delivers. It's the least you could expect out of a John Woo movie - wonderful cuts, pacing, use of slow-motion, abrupt zooming. This is some pretty wonderful eye candy, particularly the gunfight in the middle of the movie, which is certainly the peak of its achievement, and the most memorably good part of the film. I mean, Woo basically invented the guns-blazing trenchcoast slow-mo shot that has become so overused it has been elevated to cliché status. He doesn't disappoint us with more of that glass-shattering, bullet-casings-flying-all-over-the-place mentality, except for one detail which will be covered under "cons".

The "self-destructing order" that are the staple of the whole Mission: Impossible franchise is quite cleverly placed into this film. Also, this film is superior to the original in two respects: a) it stays more faithful to the general feel of the original TV series, and b) there aren't nearly as many implausabilities regarding the capabilities of modern computer technology. You no longer have a 1995 model of an Apple Macintosh Powerbook connecting to the Internet on a wireless dialup and receiving high-quality streaming video. This is not to say this film is technologically accurate - far from it. It's just that it's not nearly as blatantly obvious and disturbing as it was in the original, and that the development of technology today has made a lot of this possible. Not like it needs to be possible, of course - this is Mission: Impossible we're talking about!

Again, the gunfight. 'Twas a spectacle, although in retrospect it feels rather short.

CONS

Firstly, the plot. It suffers from a special case of "the audience won't notice" syndrome. To a casual, average action fan who's just watching the film it sounds all complex and twisty and everything, and that's cool, right? Well, to some people who pay attention to all the details, it could have a different effect. Myself, I found the plot to be intriguing to an extent and well-crafted, but in retrospect it is way too easy to summarize. In other words, it takes a great concept - unleashing a deadly virus and making money off the antidote - and turns it into a story that doesn't add too much to the basic concept itself. To add to that, the scene where Nyah (Thandie Newton's character) has to decide what to do with the last remaining virus is meant to be a suspenseful "damned if you do, damned if you don't" dilemma, but it was blatantly obvious what the surprise third-option outcome was going to be. I will not detail it exactly because it is quite the spoiler, but anyone who has seen the film knows what I'm talking about.

The ending is terrible. Not as blatantly stupid, unsatisfying as the faked-orgasm "gotcha" ending to Mission to Mars (which, ironically, was directed by Brian de Palma who directed the first Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible), but it was getting there. The film basically built up to the high point - the gunfight in the Biocyte labs - and declined from there.

Characters? Don't make me laugh. Nyah is treated as nothing more than an object for the latter half of the movie. The villain, Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) is... not villainous enough. Ironic, since this whole movie emphasizes the "there must be a villain for there to be a hero" concept with the whole virus thing - a line of this sort (I do not recall it word-for-word) opens the film and comes back two or three times. Well, where's the villain? Do I sense hypocrisy here?

Also, there is an ominous lack of gore in this film, to avoid getting slapped the 'R' in the United States. Not that it matters to me, because either way it would have gotten a 14A here in Canada. I mean, a John Woo film without blood flying everywhere and people getting literally ripped into shreds by round after round of gunfire? Sure, you don't need a lot of it, but it just gets unrealistic in this film how good people can look after suffering all the hits they take. Not just with guns, but in the fistfights as well. We are getting full-length fights, with characters that look like they've only suffered a skirmish.

Oh, and Tom Cruise looks better with short hair.

OVERALL

I was expecting the gunflick of the year with this film. Well if this is the gunflick of the year, then this is a bad year for action films. Again, the Biocyte gun battle was spectacular, and other action sequences were pretty good as well. But then you have a pretty thin plot that tries to fool the general audience into thinking it is complex, and succeeds from what I can tell from other casual reviews spread throughout the Internet.

How does this film stand compared to other films of the same sort or kin? Around the same level as The World is Not Enough, not quite as good as the first Cruise Mission: Impossible though some aspects are certainly better, and miles behind last year's leading action flick The Matrix. If you're a fan of mindless action movies without a whole lot of substance and completely lack emotion - which I am, to an extent - you might want to see it once. I know for certain it's not worth a second viewing, though - and I'd readily have given up seeing this film in favor of spending yet another $11 Canadian on yet another viewing of Gladiator.