Mission:Impossible II (2000) Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5.0 stars
Cast: Tom Cruise, Thandie Newton, Ving Rhames, Dougray Scott, William R. Mapother, Anthony Hopkins, Rade Serbedzija Written by: Robert Towne Directed by: John Woo Running Time: 123 minutes Screening Theater: Starnet Pablo 9 Theaters - Jacksonville Beach, FL
"Well this is not Mission: Difficult, Mr. Hunt, it's Mission: Impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you." ---Agent Swanbeck (Sir Anthony Hopkins), the series' new Agent Phelps, takes Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) down a notch.
A Russian scientist (Rade Serbedzija) has created a new virus (and its antidote) called Chimera that destroys its host within twenty hours of injection. A rogue IMF agent, Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), wants to use the disease and cure to blackmail a pharmaceutical company into selling him enough stock to make him owner of the company (he knows it will soon be worth its weight in gold thanks to the outbreak of the virus he is going to cause). Posing as Ethan Hunt, Ambrose gains the confidence of the scientist long enough to get only the cure, not realizing that the scientist had injected himself with the virus to prevent exactly what Ambrose was trying to do.
The real Ethan Hunt is called in from his vacation to persuade beautiful thief Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandie Newton) to assist the IMF team in retrieving the stolen goods. Ethan and Nyah fall quickly in love, but Ethan soon finds himself in a real dilemma when he learns that his new love has only been hired because she was a former lover of Ambrose's. Reluctantly, he sets up Nyah to be rescued from prison by Ambrose so she can infiltrate his compound and send back intelligence to the team. Ethan must race against time to keep Ambrose from obtaining and spreading the virus and prevent any harm from coming to Nyah.
Although the first Mission:Impossible film was a moderate box office success, audiences panned it because they felt the plot was too confusing and there wasn't much action (although being a fan of the series both old and new, I thought the movie was pretty decent and especially gutsy to make Phelps a bad guy). That problem has been rectified in the sequel by making the plot more accessible (courtesy of one of the writers of the previous entry, Robert Towne) and by turning the film into one gigantic action set piece under the steady hand of action film guru John Woo. The end result is one of the most entertaining (yet simple) action films made in a long while.
Unfortunately, the first forty minutes or so are relatively slow, dwelling mainly on Ethan and Nyah's quickly blossoming romance and seeming more in place in a James Bond film than with the less glamorous Mission:Impossible TV series. Ethan's conflict is a compelling one, but it seems very rushed (and comes about because of a near fatal car wreck that Ethan himself causes!). John Woo handles all of this with an artistic flair that seems out of place, featuring a great deal of slow fades and dramatically framed close-ups. The surreal nature of these sequences are distracting and ultimately a detriment to the film.
Thankfully though, at the point Ambrose discovers Nyah's deception, Mission:Impossible II becomes very entertaining and action-packed. Robert Towne's screenplay takes some of the conventions set up in the first film and parodies them during a sequence where Ethan must break into a high-rise building and retrieve the remaining specimens of the virus. After that, the action scenes just begin to build in intensity, as is the case with many of Woo's previous high-octane films. The final half hour is an all out assault of action (a good deal of which is ruined by the trailer, unfortunately).
As far as summer entertainment goes, Mission:Impossible II is serviceable fare. Anyone looking for hardcore action won't be disappointed (except for during the first half of the film, perhaps). Even if you weren't a fan of the first film, this entry deserves some checking out. [PG-13]
Reviewed by Brian Matherly - bmath2000@hotmail.com AOL Instant Messenger: Widescreen25 The Jacksonville Film Journal - http://www.jaxfilmjournal.com/
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