Mission Impossible II – Classical John Woo over the top action feast. Not a good Mission Impossible movie.

Mission Impossible II by John Woo on Blu-ray
My rating: 5 out of 10 stars

IMF agent Ethan Hunt has been sent on a mission to retrieve and destroy the supply of a genetically created disease called ‘Chimera’. His mission is made impossible due to the fact that he is not the only person after samples of the disease. He must also contest with a gang of international terrorists headed by a turned bad former IMF agent who has already managed to steal the cure called ‘Bellerophon’ and now need ‘Chimera’ to complete their grand plan of infecting the whole world. In order to infiltrate and locate the terrorist group he relies on the help of an international thief Nyah of whom he quickly develops a love interest. Time is not only running out for Agent Hunt to find and destroy ‘Chimera’ before the terrorists get their hands on it, but he must also find ‘Bellerophon’ so as to save his love interest who has already become infected by the disease from a terrible and rapid death.

This is a decent enough mindless action movie with a lot of over the top action but it is not really a Mission Impossible movie. The movie starts of reasonably well being somewhat intelligent with a bit of Mission Impossible feel to it. It is actually almost a bit slow at times. However, for the second half of the movie it really degrades into a classical John Woo, over the top, action feast with all pretense of intelligence and any true Mission Impossible feel gone. John Woo is not the right person to make a Mission Impossible movie.

As with the first movie if it would not have been labelled Mission Impossible I would probably have given it a higher rating since it is a decent enough, mostly braindead though, Hollywood action movie. However, I have higher expectations from a movie labelled Mission Impossible.

Tom Cruise is quite okay as Ethan Hunt. Dougray Scott is okayish as the bad guy. Sometimes he projects the right big bad and mad bad-guy attitude but sometimes he is just silly and just as over the top as the action scenes. He is supposed to be a mastermind but he comes out as a thug a’ la a not so intelligent drug baron in many scenes.

The action scenes? Well, they are classical John Woo material. Fast paced with a lot of stunts and things that go boom. They are also, as expected, hugely over the top and unbelievable. They provide a enjoyable visual experience but, as I wrote above, they are not really what I would expect from a Mission Impossible movie.

The romance between Hunt and Nyah is the typical Hollywood, let’s throw in a sexy girl and some superficial attraction, which develops from get lost to I love you in the matter of a few hours of contact, between the lead character and the girl. Meh!

I get the impression that the people that have created these movies so far have not really watched a single full season of Mission Impossible.