Mission Impossible II (2000)
Watching John Woo's Mission Impossible II, I took note of a good deal of the fascinating images and remembered again why visual texts are taking the place of written ones. These violent shots are so well choreographed and slick that it is hard not to feast on them as if they were the most tempting of junk foods. The scenes of chasing and fighting in this film are nearly as ballet-like as many scenes in The Matrix; as a matter of fact, in an odd nod, the hero and villain in MI2 actually go airborne, their bodies colliding like those of Neo and his nemesis.
What this is leading up to is not a lecture but an observation: a picture is not worth a thousand words; it is not worth even one.
What's the foundation to this argument? We are discussing entertainment here. And the images in modern action flicks move too quickly to digest and assimilate while we are watching the flick in the theater for probably the first and only time. There are even gaping holes in the exposition: what is the IMF agency and what are Ethan Hunt's incentives to be such a big part of it? Does he have a personal life, and what else does he do for relaxation beside the extremest of extreme sports? Clearly the only scenes of character development are the briefest of glimpses of personalities, and all of these come second to the all-important fast pace of the plot.
Director John Woo and screenwriter Robert Towne include some nice variations on the premise of the old television series. This time Hunt sees and hears about his mission from a pair of high-tech sunglasses, which he pitches away just as they `self-destruct.' Recruiting a key member of his team for the mission is very difficult as well. Hunt's boss Swanbeck (played by Anthony Hopkins) has stipulated that it must be the expert thief (but non-spy) Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandie Newton). What they are after is the ruthless thieves who have stolen the anti-virus for a synthetic monster bug. Led by sometime IMF agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), these men have murdered hundreds of people by crashing a jetliner in the Rockies. The setup for Hunt and Nyah is that they must find out and steal back whatever they can.
Tom Cruise is the co-star of this film. The other star is the action. Cruise's Ethan Hunt is even more polished and buffed than he was in Brian DePalma's Mission Impossible. Cruise's acting is not really different than his previous films. He gets better at it the more times he tries it, but the man's range is not wide; he mostly reacts. What makes his performance strong here is his physicality: leaps and kicks and last-second recoveries that are a pleasure to watch. Again, thanks to Woo, Cruise has been told exactly what to do, and the magic men of dubbing and editing and special effects do the rest.
One dimension of Hunt's character that viewers find endearing is his compassion. Whereas the agent-gone-evil Sean Ambrose takes lives with impunity, Hunt hesitates `to harm a hair on a security guard's head.' For putting a value on human life, Hunt acts ironically, beating up on enough of Ambrose's men to qualify him as a one-man army. A cool aspect of Cruise's acrobatics is his dead-on marksmanship, his bullets finding their mark even when they are fired at the last millisecond, Hunt's body in mid-flip, upside down or just off the ground.
The other star? This stuff is purely eye-candy, as impossible in real life as any James Bond stunt. But when we see Ethan Hunt on his motorcycle, jumping and flying down a ramp and through the traces of flame left by an enemy's destroyed car, we are enrapt. Simple fight scenes now require expertise in martial arts, and often it's like watching an aggressive dance in which the combatants come off the floor without bruises or even exhaustion. Why can't we see at least one tooth being spat out of a bloody mouth?
As Nyah Nordoff-Hall, the professional thief, Thandie Newton plays it a little too simply. After initial stubbornness and even an attack (by car) on Hunt, Nyah quickly goes down to Hunt's charm, and she smiles widely whenever he holds her in his arms. Newton does, however, show spurts of very solid acting.
A motif we hear early – from the scientist who created the monster virus – is that for every hero, there has to be a villain, and this is clever not just because it is self-reflexive. The sentiment calls up what we hold as important values in people: namely, Ethan Hunt's loyalty versus Sean Ambrose's betrayal. Dougray Scott is very good at playing this baddie. He adopts such nonchalance that we hate him without effort. In a particularly suspenseful sequence, Ambrose anticipates Hunt's moves and motivations, attempting to thwart Hunt's destruction of the virus. In a quietly menacing performance, Scott leads us to the inevitable confrontation between the two super-spies. (One small problem I may as well mention here is that Ambrose -- as well as the movie -- employs too many uncannily accurate masks.)
Ving Rhames is back as the techie, Luther Stickell. His is purely a support role, as he sits in the van with the computers, or fires shoulder-held rockets from a chopper piloted by an Australian helper, Billy. Rhames is not given many lines, but his appearance is still authoritative and sure.
The score is mostly transparent. There are some nice modernizations of the Mission: Impossible theme song. But it's hard to tell if Hans Zimmer arranged them or composed variations, along with the original music.
I came out of the theater last night pleased with what I had seen. But the more I think about it, the more I notice the dumbing down of movies. Anthony Hopkins must have noticed it when he had to read the line, `Her criminal record will be expunged, wiped out.' This is just a small example of a lack of subtlety that, snowballing, will create outright insults to the intelligence. Like books, movies come in various types; let's call them heavy watching and light watching. What we are demanding from Hollywood is a large number of light watches – since this is late May, the equivalent of fluffy novels that can be read under a beach umbrella, books that require little if any real thought. This is fine, of course. It's just that I don't like a steady diet of junk.
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