Ethan Hunt is back.
Another IM agent, Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), has gone rogue - stealing a lethal virus and offering it to the highest bidder.
In order to get inside Ambrose’s gang, Hunt has to enlist Ambrose’s former flame, professional thief Nyah Hall (Thandiwe Newton).
The mission turns personal when Hunt and Hall fall in love…
This movie is a great shampoo commercial.
Of all the Mission: Impossibles this one has gone back and forth in my estimation the most.
It is silly and most of it feels like an edifice to how big of a star Tom cruise is, but with five other movies in the series, this one feels like a breeze.
While I am a fan of his work on the series, I am not a fan of Chris McQuarrie returning as the key creative power over the back half of the films.
One of the exciting things about these rewatches was seeing how different filmmakers approached the series
This movie feels like what it is - Notorious directed by John Woo with all of the stylistic and pop culture trends of the late nineties.
This movie has a very specific bead on its assumed audience - it carries through in the clothes, the music and the editing style.
That being said, as a movie this sucker still works, in a melodramatic (soap) operatic kind of way.
General consensus puts this below M:I III, but on this viewing I have to disagree.
This movie is leaps and bounds better than its sequel - this one has a story and characters that make sense. It at least knows what story it is telling and completes it. Is it silly? Yes. Is it clever? Not at all.
Even if the love story ends up feeling like a bro’s take on a love triangle, there is a familiarity to the conventions it is built on and the filmmakers take it seriously.
This sincerity is one of the movie’s selling points because it is often laugh-out-loud ridiculous.
The one thing that really gets me every single time is how great Thandiwe Newton is as Nya - in the middle of this big silly movie, she is delivering what feels like a mature, complicated adult performance.
She sells the early scenes, in her element as a jewel thief. She sells the romance (as much as that is possible). She sells the character’s anger at being betrayed, and the fear of her ex-boyfriend.
Even in the scene where she injects herself with the virus, her smile and turn on Sean packs so much power because she has built up to the character’s assertion - she is not Sean’s plaything, or Ethan’s pawn. She makes the movie.
Han Zimmer’s score is OTT (and sounds like his work on Gladiator) but I fall for it every time.
And unlike the sterile almost-romance of the last movie, this movie is actually sexy.
There are way too many mask scenes. The plot is simultaneously too complicated and too simple. The third act goes on way too long. And it really does just feel like a highlight for Cruise as an action star.
But taken as a hyper-active, sexy action movie, Mission: Impossible II does the business.
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