A FRANCHISE NEWBIE REVIEWS ‘MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — 2’

I had never seen a ‘MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE’ movie… until this week.

By ERIC LANGBERG

Good day, readers. My mission, which I have chosen to accept, is to watch and review all four existing Mission: Impossible movies before the new film is released this Friday, July 31st, 2015. I’d never seen any of them before embarking on this mission. I have a long road ahead of me. As always, should I fail to complete this mission, I will disavow any knowledge of my prior intentions. This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, me.

‘M:I-2’ (2000)

Directed by: John Woo

Starring: Tom Cruise as “Ethan Hunt”

Dougray Scott as “Sean Ambrose”

Thandie Newton as “Nyah Nordoff-Hall”

Ving Rhames as “Luther Stickell”

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 59%

The Plot

As opposed to the first Mission: Impossible movie, this time Ethan Hunt must prove his loyalty to the Impossible Missions Force by stealing back a stolen something-or-other. Okay, so it’s got a pretty similar plot.

This time around, the “something-or-other” is a deadly lab-engineered strain of influenza known as “Chimera,” which has been stolen by a former IMF agent determined to sell it for $37million. Hunt’s love interest/sidekick is Nyah, a former flame of the former IMF guy, and Hunt sends her undercover to try to pass him information… to the detriment of their relationship. In a race against the clock, Hunt only has twenty hours to destroy the virus and steal the antidote to prevent a global outbreak.

What’d the Critics Think?

Dennis Harvey wrote for Variety that the movie is “perfectly generic” while somehow also stating that “Woo lays on his own particular high-octane stylishness so thick the results edge perilously toward self-parody.” Derek Adams in Time Out found the movie full of “hysterically hyper visuals and boytoy gimmickry.” In The New York Times, A.O. Scott wasn’t a fan of Tom Cruise’s performance, writing that Cruise “mostly registers confusion and fatigue, soon amply shared by the audience.”

Other critics, however, found the film perfectly passable. Mick LaSalle, who disliked the first one, found M:I-2 to be “in almost every way an improvement over the austere 1996 film.” Roger Ebert enjoyed Thandie Newton’s character, finding it “shocking” that a woman in an action movie makes decisions that influence the plot, and he called the film overall “more evolved, more confident, more sure-footed” than its predecessor. Finally, Matthew Turner in ViewLondon praises ol’ chisel-jaw (Cruise) even as he finds himself wondering whether “Ethan Hawke ever does menial stuff like supermarket shopping.” (Ethan Hawke, for the record, is in no way affiliated with M:I-2.

What Did I Think?

How much Tom Cruise hair is too much Tom Cruise hair? I have this theory that Tom Cruise’s level of charisma and attractiveness is inversely proportional to the length of his hair; the longer the hair, the less-bearable he is. (Is there a Buzzfeed listicle about this? There has to be…) In Mission: Impossible, his hair was buzzed short, and he came off like a slightly-nerdy, super-suave superspy. In M:I-2, though, the hair is much longer (the better to flow in the wind while riding a motorcycle, I guess), and instead of seeming suave, his every moment onscreen is dripping with smarm.

So, the smarmy swagger caused by the longer hair made the Ethan Hunt of Mission: Impossible — 2 a bit harder to like or identify with than the character he was in the first movie. Plus, it doesn’t help that he spends the first act of the film pursuing and falling in love with Thandie Newton instead of getting up to some more interesting spy shenanigans.

Can I talk about that romance subplot for a minute? Like the first Mission: Impossible film, there are hints of Hitchcock, as the “falls in love with a woman and then sends her to spy on her former love” storyline echoes Hitch’s Notorious. But wow, is it unbearable here. It’s as if they read the Variety review of M:I and were offended that the film had been called sexless, so they tried to sex up the sequel as much as possible. So before Hunt gets up to some impossible missions, after some oh-so-witty banter, like Nyah saying “Do you mind if I get on top?,” we get lots of shots like this:

I agree with the oft-repeated judgment that Woo occasionally lets his Hong Kong, kung-fu style get in the way of the storytelling. Some of the stylistic flourishes are appreciated, like the frequent Eastern-sounding strings and drums to punch up the score, or the admittedly badass motorcycle chase at the end that features numerous slo-mo doves flying through flames, but the stylized editing and shot composition sometimes veers toward the hilariously lame rather than the exhilaratingly awesome.

Exhibit A is the sequence where Ethan and Nyah’s romantic, flirty car chase (barf) ends with their cars locked together, spinning toward the edge of a cliff. Everything slows down, the sound drops out, and we hear low, dramatic singing as they look at each other with exaggerated horror, their cars dancing together, swirling and swooshing toward oblivion. It’s too much, impossible to take seriously even as escapism.

Finally, one last complaint… the virus Hunt has to recover is one of the most blatant MacGuffins I’ve ever seen in a movie. (Another nod to Hitchcock maybe?) Hunt literally doesn’t know what he’s after for the first half of the film — he’s told that Sean Ambrose stole something called a Chimera, and his whole mission is to A) figure out what exactly that is, B) determine why it’s important, and C) steal it back. Because of this, for most of the movie, it’s not even clear what the objective is, other than that there’s a Thing and it’s Important, because don’t ask questions. And whatever that Thing is, you should probably make it blow up. Good luck, Ethan.

That all being said, there were a lot of aspects of the movie that I did enjoy. I really liked the set design for Ambrose’s remote hideout, for one… something about the wraparound glass walls and blocky, multi-level floors reminded me of the mansion above Mt. Rushmore in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.

Also, even though his motivations were murky and his accent occasionally impenetrable, I really enjoyed Dougray Scott as Sean Ambrose. He’s suitably ridiculous — in a good way — as the villain, alternately jumping with joy or moping about his mansion, bellowing with anger or laughing with fiendish glee. See, for example, that above gif of him being upset Ethan stole the Chimera.

There’s also an action setpiece in the middle clearly designed to echo the suspended computer hacking from the first film, and while the sequel’s wire-work isn’t as memorable or tense, it’s still fun to see Hunt swan-dive through an opening vent and plummet down the center of a tower.

Finally, I enjoyed the film’s occasional self-referential humor. When the new shady head of the Impossible Missions Force (Anthony Hopkins) tells Hunt that he has to send Nyah into the lion’s den and convince her to get information from her ex-boyfriend, Hunt protests that it’s going to be difficult to convince her to do it.

“This isn’t Mission: Difficult, Mr. Hunt,” Hopkins smirks. “It’s Mission: Impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you!”

This is, indeed, Mission: Impossible. It’s pretty much what I expected the franchise to be before seeing any of these movies: over-the-top action, needlessly convoluted plots, Tom Cruise running — which this particular installment didn’t have nearly enough of — and lots of explosions. I’ve heard that M:I-2 is the worst of the series, so hopefully from here on out, things are looking up!

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