Review of Mission Impossible 2

Introduction

Although it bares the faintest waft of resemblance to Brian De Palma’s original blockbuster, John Woo’s jaunty, camp, OTT and without doubt revamped millennial ‘Mission’ is more like ‘The Matrix’ meets James Bond. The script, courtesy of veteran (and frankly great) screenwriter Robert Towne (‘Chinatown’, ‘The Last Detail’) actually provides a story that makes sense, well, a rip-off of ‘Notorious’ to be exact, only with hair-flipping at 100 frames per second and action scenes as dedicated dance numbers that is.

Video

Perfect colours, loud and vibrant 2.35: 1 anamorphic transfer without a single blemish or spit of dirt in sight. Cool.

Audio

Ear drum bursting sound-effects aside, the audio is wonderful: a great showcase for another one of Hans Zimmer’s scores which proves that it simply IS outtakes from ‘Gladiator’. Cheap bastards.

Features

The John Woo commentary is the usual back-slapping self-love continuing on into perpetuity. Occasionally Woo’s emphatic description of the ‘deeply romantic’ storyline feels like he’s talking about another movie rather than the mad, funny, cynical slice of corporate filmmaking playing on screen. Although, the Woo-maestro does constantly perform a linguistic rendition of the word ‘sexy’ that you really should hear. There’s a plethora of behind the scenes documentaries on the disc that, rather unsurprisingly focus on the film’s stunt photography and special effects rather than the more anorexic dramatic aspects. The whole crew are keen to emphasize Cruise’s willingness to perform some of the more dangerous stunts by himself, quite why then the documentaries use long shots and fast-cutaways of the leading man performing said stunts remains something of a mystery. The ‘Mission Improbable’ spoof documentary is not a bad laugh, with Ben Stiller hamming it up as Tom Crooze, his namesakes vain, egotistical stunt double, who, to put it mildly, is suffering from some self-image issues. Admirable too, that even Woo himself turns up briefly to parody his own image as a sadistic foreigner. Rounding off the package is a Metallica music video and some DVD-ROM features.

Conclusion

Despite boasting the by now obligatory hero in black leather trench coat and shades mowing down baddies in slow motion while performing gravity-defying leaps and bounds, at least one gets plenty of Woo for their money: flying around desert canyons opening; quintessential darting sparks and twin-gun tango in top secret killer-bug research facility; white-doves and high-kicking hilarity in coastal bunker hideaway; slick as the Exxon Valdez motorcycle chase complete with lots of that flaming orange stuff and, to top it all off, an endless, high-kicking, knife in the eye and crashing waves clash of the titans fisticuffs in the sand finale… phew!

Tom Cruise as the low-centre of gravity twirling dervish super-agent is his usual bland, impersonal but curiously appealing self, convincing both in bedding Thandie Newton in the first reel and kicking numerous asses in the pull-out-all-the-stops conclusion. Dougray Scott also impresses as an appealingly sincere Scottish villain, perfectly matching Cruise’s petty little-boy selfishness with Newton who becomes the jewel of both their affections. Indeed, by the end they are literally Knights manning their chariots in defense of the damsel they will both kill for. Of course, this being a John Woo picture, the chariots are motorcycles and the killing is slow-motion bone-crunching kung-fu excess accompanied by swooping camera moves, idiosyncratic gunfire and yes, plenty of lovely white doves. s***, obviously, but fun.