Supelice
Dreadfully Boring
Adeel Hail
Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.
Ortiz
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
shakercoola
With a curiously similar plotline to Notorious (1946) this sequel offers much action and balletic violence and a familiar John Woo last act set piece. It's overblown, overcooked, and there is much less intrigue compared to the first mission. A descent in a vault has nowhere near as much tension as the first film. That said, Thandie Newton is winsome; Cruise is very capable as the spy trying to thwart a lethal disease outbreak; Dougray Scott is there to ensure the melodrama is maintained.
zik-remorca
I love the Mission: Impossible film series, but goddamn I wasn't able to even get past 30 minutes of this goddamn trash.Best to think this never existed.
MSB Reviews
Mission: Impossible - Fallout is coming out next week, so naturally I decided to watch and review every single movie of the franchise. I already wrote my thoughts on Mission: Impossible (1996) and now it is time for the second installment of the saga ... Where we, unfortunately, reach the bottom (better sooner than later).Even though the action stunts are still mostly realistic and very well filmed, they reach a point where I can't buy into them anymore. From two guys colliding mid-air after jumping from their bikes at high speed to explosions spread throughout the entire runtime, this film is pretty bad. 60 minutes into it and there isn't a single action sequence. The suspense and tension, which are a stamp of the first movie, are nowhere near the levels that they used to be, and the slow-motion is excessively employed.The story incorporates a love triangle between Ethan Hunt, Sean Ambrose, and Nyah that feels so strangely awkward and unnecessary. There is an evident James Bond vibe to this film, and that is precisely what wrecked it. This is Mission: Impossible and John Woo almost ruined the whole saga. Tom Cruise's character is an entirely different agent. He transforms himself into this sort of playboy kind of guy who has nothing to do with the Hunt that I know from M:I-1. The whole story hinges on the audience's feelings about his relationship with Nyah, but I can't care enough about Thandie Newton's character because she simply has no depth!Ving Rhames was by far the best secondary character in the first movie. In this one, Luther is just a computer nerd and his funny personality is gone. Dougray Scott plays a boring villain with generic motivations, and everyone else doesn't really matter. There is a severe lack of character development. Nevertheless, the saving grace of M:I-2 is definitely its cast. Newton is very charming as Nyah, Scott makes his awful script more believable and Cruise is ... Well, Tom Cruise.He continues to do all his stunts, and there are some "money shots" that he performs exceptionally well. To be honest, this film has some beautiful cinematography and a magnificent Hans Zimmer's score. Even when the action takes itself too seriously, these aspects at least make it bearable. John Woo does a lot of things the wrong way, but he adds some subtle details to his shots that become important to the plot later on.However, this is about it. There are so many cons to overwhelm the pros. The editing is all over the place. The pacing is no longer frenetic as it was in the previous movie. Like I wrote above, I have to wait more than one hour to enjoy some freaking action. The first half of the film is slow and tedious, while the second half starts to accelerate to finish in style. The ending has so much action that most of it becomes stupid. I mean, really stupid. Some moments are supposed to be taken seriously, but it is a tough task not to laugh at the hilarious set pieces.How can a sequel to such a fantastic action movie be so bad? Well, M:I-2 is the undeniable proof. There are so many things gone wrong with this one. John Woo transformed a confusing yet mysterious plot from the first installment into a hilariously awful screenplay. The plot is quite predictable, the story is emotionally weightless, and even the action goes to levels of dumbness that I've only witnessed in the worst possible films. A great cast and some nice technical details help counterweigh the cons, but Tom Cruise's lead saves the day.
coflaky
The plot of this film is "borrowed" from Notorious which was one of Alfred Hitchcock's brilliant films. But John Woo took that story and made a really mediocre action film. Mission Impossible, TV and Movie, is a brain oriented franchise. But this film is filled with doves, love triangles, music video style shots and weird Gladiator soundtrack. Maybe if it was named "That Action Movie", it would've been success.
