Even though it grossed about $400 million worldwide, has anyone really been waiting anxiously for four years for a sequel to "Mission: Impossible"? How many people do you know who really loved (much less understood) that slick, cold and mostly forgettable movie? Apparently Tom Cruise did, and when it comes to getting films produced, you don't need much more of a supporter than that. Perhaps, after spending most of the late 90s exercising his acting muscles in such weighty fare as "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Magnolia" he's been yearning for the day when he can show up on the set, throw on a black leather jacket, jump on a motorcycle, ride like the wind and forget all about digging deep within his psyche to find the right emotion. "Besides," he might rationalize, "I didn't get the Oscar for 'Magnolia,' and my fans complained there weren't any explosions in 'Eyes Wide Shut,' so why not give the people what they want?" If pyrotechnics and chases are all it takes to satisfy a summer movie audience, no one can accuse "Mission: Impossible II" -- or "M: I-2," as the press materials call it -- of shortchanging its viewers. There's even a smattering of James Bond-style high-tech spy wizardry thrown in, including a tracking device implanted in the body that can send your position anywhere on earth to a satellite that zaps the information back to a computer, and a variety of extraordinarily realistic masks that can help heroes masquerade as villains and vice versa. Since "M: I-2" is directed by John Woo ("Face-Off," "The Killer"), it also includes several grandiose gun battles, almost all of which are slowed down to emphasize, Woo's followers will say, their balletic qualities. To the masses, however, the movie's continual use of slow-motion will probably be unintentionally funny at first, then just plain irritating. Unfortunately for Woo, American directors have ripped off his moves so many times now (most notably in "The Matrix," which managed both to steal them and improve upon them) it seems as if the old master is picking his own pocket. Flawed as it is, "M: I-2" is still a major improvement over the original "Mission," which Brian DePalma seemed to direct on auto-pilot. For starters, it's got a clearly defined plot line; the original was so unnecessarily complicated it would have taken flow charts and a slide show to explain. Robert Towne, who wrote both films, borrows heavily from Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 masterpiece "Notorious," as Cruise's super-agent Ethan Hunt must send the woman he loves -- in this case, an exotic-looking cat burglar named Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandie Newton) -- into the arms of evil in order to get the information he needs to save the world. In "Notorious," Cary Grant was trying to expose Nazis; here, Hunt has to locate the lethal Chimera virus, which devours its victims from the inside out in record time. So the dutiful Nyah beds down with her old boyfriend Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), a wealthy, wicked entrepreneur who'd like to infect all of Australia with Chimera, then put the cure on the market at an inflated price. Supervillains these days don't want ransom money -- they want stock options in bio-tech firms. In contrast to most of today's crash-and-smash epics, which can't go more than five minutes without dropping a one-liner, "M: I-2" maintains a straight face, even when its characters are doing fairly ridiculous things. When the funniest guy in the movie is Anthony Hopkins (who shows up at the beginning and the end of the story as Hunt's boss), you know you're watching a serious-minded film. Disappointingly, "M: I-2" brings back Ving Rhames as Hunt's former partner Luther Stickell, then keeps him on the bench, plopping him in front of a computer screen or at the controls of a helicopter instead of letting him in on the action. That territory is reserved for Cruise and Cruise alone, and the star does a more than capable job of handling his stunts, including a final knife fight that, while drawn-out in the same way as Woo's overblown finale in "Face-Off," generates at least one major shock that's sure to have everyone gasping simultaneously. Cruise comes up startlingly short, however, in his scenes with Newton. Although the story is built around their romance, there's nothing exciting going on between them, and even when Towne follows his "Notorious" blueprint right down to the scene in which our heroine poisons herself in the name of duty, Hunt seems only moderately distressed. Poor Nyah would have gotten a much warmer reception from Cary Grant. James Sanford
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