Opening night last Wednesday, I had the unfortunate oppurtunity of witnessing John Woo's attempt at re-creating a classic. Personally, I enjoy the director's previous works and had great expectations of MI2 despite the critics reviews. For one thing, I ha d just seen Battlefield Earth and felt nothing could be quite as horrendous, secondly, I am a huge fan of the old mission impossibles along with the first film.
Much to my surprise, the spy thriller aspect of the movie was absolutely demolished. A horrid plot, the overuse of secret identities (ie: the masks), lack of gadgets and lack of actual spying/espionage took place all contributing to the disaster that is t his movie. Scenes which included such things were few, short and weak.
Throughout the movie, one word came to mind, Bond. John Woo has taken Mission Impossible and turned it into a classic Bond film full of classy heros, extravagent femmes, muscle cars, car chases, airplane jumps, motorcycle chases, pointless gun fire and a hero that could kick 20 bad guys asses at once.
Another weak point in the movie has to be the numerous re-occurences from MI. Once again we see a rogue agent who knows everyone of Ethan's moves, our hero being suspended horizontally a few feet from the ground, retrieval of stolen items, recruiting crim inals as spys among many others.
This movie is definatly not worth seeing, in theaters or even at home. From horrible lines such as 'This isn't mission difficult, it's mission impossible, difficult should be a walk in the park for you', the overuse of firearms, Ethan turning into a ninja (using unrealistic The Matrix type moves), the lack of a non-cliche plot and in general the type of brainless action movie that requires zero thought and 100% testosterone. As Bill Brownstein, a movie reviewer for the Montreal Gazette put it, 'this is ju st as bad if not worse then Battlefield earth'. And for the record, the same newspaper gave Battlefield Earth 1.5 stars while MI2 got the big bomb....
Other Reviews:
Punkis' Review
The Magic Garden
hollywood.com
M:I-2 Official Site
Mission Impossible 2 Soundtrack
Go See Mission Impossible 2
Movifone
Debris (debris[at]attrition.org)
