Posted: 05/25/2000

Mission: Impossible II

(2000)

by D. Patrick Seitz

“Mission” accomplished, more or less, thanks to Cruise control.

I hope I wasn’t the only person to be thoroughly confused by the MissionImpossible: 2 trailer the first time he saw it. I mean, all the kicking and the flippin’ and the bippin’ and the boppin’ didn’t make much sense until John Woo’s name was mentioned. After that, it was crystal clear - and the anticipation began. I had to rent Face/Off just to tide me over in the interim.

Mission Impossible: 2 opens with Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) defying death - and gravity - during a vacation in Utah. The vacation is cut short by his boss (Sir Anthony Hopkins), who tells him to defy death in Australia, instead. Hunt is ordered to retrieve a super-virus and antidote that fell into terrorist hands while the originator of said bug was en route to the CDC. Unfortunately, the leader of the terrorists is Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), a former Mission Impossible agent and homicidal Type A personality. Apparently, the fact that the guy is totally freakin’ insane never came up during whatever sort of intensive and all-inclusive psychological screening went on at his local Mission Impossible Recruitment Center.

In any event, Hunt is shipped off to Seville to recruit Nyah Hall (Thandie Newton), a world-class jewel thief, for reasons unknown. It isn’t until after Hunt has recruited Hall right out of her clothes that he’s told why she is to be included on the team: she’s to be bedroom-bait for Ambrose, whom she used to date and who still carries a torch for her. Hunt and Hall are less than pleased by this revelation, but they suck it up and she agrees to take one for the team. They head off to Australia to nab the virus.

I can’t tell you what happens from that point on. Suffice it to say that Mission Impossible: 2 culminates in a gen-u-ine John Woo extended action sequence, complete with impossible feats of acrobatic derring-do, slo-mo fight scenes, burning doorways, and superfluous doves.

Though enjoyable, Mission Impossible: 2 is far from perfect. It’s definitely a film geared towards the senses at the expense of appealing to the mind. The more I think about it, the less I like it - much like a food that is pleasing to the palate at the time of consumption, but leaves behind an increasingly funky aftertaste.

Still, you have to give then an A for effort. Mission Impossible: 2 outshines its predecessor, and that’s a praiseworthy distinction for any sequel. You can tell that all parties involved put a conscious effort into upping the ante with regards to character development. It’s an improvement on the original film - in which Emilio Estevez got squished right out of the starting gate and nobody in the theater batted an eye - but it doesn’t quite hit the mark. Hunt’s “partners” (Ving Rhames and John Polson) are perfect examples of this. The former sits in the MI Mystery Machine and watches events unfold via computer that he is utterly powerless to change or avert, and the latter’s raison d’être is to fly the helicopter (much like the fellow from Magnum, P.I.). Perhaps they spent their copious amounts of off-screen time manufacturing the inexhaustible supply of plastic masks that Hunt employs during the course of the film. Not too likely, I admit, but at least it would justify their presence. One gets the impression that if only Ethan Hunt had six arms, he and Nyah could have dealt with the Ambrose problem all by their lonesome - and if only he had six arms and a pair of breasts, she could have stayed home, too.

Along those same lines, it’s hard to get all hot and bothered about Ambrose. Yeah, he’s bad - but he’s not bad enough. His level of bad-assedness might have been enough for the first film, back when Ethan Hunt was still a mere mortal. Not that Dougray Scott didn’t do a fine job, but he’s no Chow Yun Fat.

Really, though, there’s no time; this is Tom Cruise’s show, from start to finish. He co-produced it and convinced John Woo to come aboard as director, and don’t you think that his star power and influence isn’t dripping from every frame. There was enough time for adequate character development or for Cruise’s 200-megawatt smile - not for both. Guess which one they opted for?

The threat of viral infection, no matter how lethal, is a bear without teeth in MI:2 since the audience isn’t given a taste of its destructive powers. There was better usage of the virus threat in Chill Factor, and it pains me to think that Chill Factor outperformed any movie in any respect. It’s a rather cold and emotionless way of offing people - a scenario that’s been thoroughly explored well prior to Mission Impossible: 2. Weren’t Adam West and Cesar Romero mixed up in that sort of monkey business down at Gotham Dam back in the 1960s?

As a completely tangential observation, Ambrose’s second-in-command (Richard Roxburgh) has an appearance chillingly similar to that of B-52’s member Fred Schneider. Every time Roxburgh appeared, I was waiting for him to parrot Ambrose’s lines in that unmistakable Schneider sing-song, or just burst into “Love Shack”.

On the whole, though, Mission Impossible: 2 does its job. It’s not perfect, but there’s no reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Much like Popeye, MI:2 is what it is - and that’s all that it is. Watch it, enjoy it, and lock it away in the annals of your mind before thinking about it nullifies the enjoyment factor.

D. Patrick Seitz recently put down roots in Los Angeles, where he’s trying his hand at acting, writing, and singing.

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