There is no doubt during any given moment of Mission: Impossible II that it is a John Woo film. Woo’s signature visual ballistics and predilection for highly wrought melodrama of the kind Douglas Sirk might be proud are imprinted on virtually every frame, and it is no surprise that a running joke on the set was that the title should have been John Woo’s Mission: Impossible.

The best thing producer/star Tom Cruise did was track down and convince the Hong Kong action auteur to helm the sequel to Mission: Impossible (1996), the first entry in the now long-running blockbuster series. The first film was directedd by Brian De Palma, who took his own signature approach to the material, making a calculated and somewhat cold spy thriller. In the sequel, Woo took the opposite approach, replacing De Palma's precision suspense with highly stylized gun fights and roaring motorcycle chases.

The screenplay for M:I-2 was penned by noted screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown) from an original story by Star Trek: The Next Generation veterans Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga. It has its share of twists and turns and the now-familiar moments of characters peeling off impossibly detailed latex masks to show that good guys were impersonating bad guys and vice versa (an aspect of the M:I series that must have appealed to Woo’s taste for blurring good and evil). However, the basic narrative always remains followable, so that when the big action sequences arise, there is little question as to what is at stake.

Tom Cruise reprises his role as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, but this time his character is warmer and more humane, largely because this time he has a love interest, a professional thief named Nyah (Thandie Newton, then best known for her tortured role in Jonathan Demme’s Beloved). Nyah is brought into Ethan’s latest mission because she once had a relationship with Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), a renegade special agent who has stolen a killer virus and plans to sell it to a pharmaceutical company for millions of dollars. Of course, for the pharmaceutical company to make money off the virus’ antidote, lots of people need to be infected, and the film gives us some ghastly pictures of what the virus does to the human body in just over 20 hours.

Most of the film takes place in Sydney, Australia, which provides a nice backdrop for Woo’s signature action sequences. There is a break-in scene that starts off as a lightweight version of the famous CIA break-in from the first film, but Woo’s action sensibilities quickly take over, and the next thing you know, Cruise is running through a seemingly endless hail of slow-motion bullets, a gun blazing in each hand. (Of course, this is PG-13 John Woo, so one of his most notable trademarks, the artful slow-motion explosion of hundreds of blood squibs, is absent.) And once Limp Bizkit’s thundering heavy metal rendition of Lalo Schifrin’s memorable theme from the original TV show stars pounding on the soundtrack, you know you’re in new territory.

While the movie starts off slow and jerky, lurching clumsily from scene to scene in an awkward attempt to establish the story and characters, it quickly finds its pace and rhythm. The last third of the movie is a nonstop action extravaganza, culminating in a delirious chase sequence on motorcycles that leads to a prolonged fight on the beach that is cross-cut with scenes of Nyah about to kill herself because she is infected with the last strain of the virus. Melodramatic, yes, but in Woo’s capable hands it works.

If M:I-2 has a weak spot, it is the villain, which is ironic given that the film repeats a line of dialogue about how “Every search for a hero must begin with something that every hero requires: A villain” at least three times. Dougray Scott is a fine actor, and he glowers quite well, but he is never truly menacing or diabolical. In fact, he seems a pale shadow next to the striking figure Cruise cuts as Ethan Hunt. Cruise has such indelible, natural screen presence that he absolutely demands someone with equal screen weight opposite him, and Scott just doesn’t cut it. This is especially disappointing because one of Woo's most consistent themes is the squaring off of two desperate men who are good/evil mirrors of each other (see 1989’s The Killer or 1997’s Face/Off).

While M:I-2 works on its own terms, it won’t be mistaken for one of Woo’s best films. Still, it is certainly a cut above the majority of action extravaganzas released in theaters each year. It didn’t quite live up to the high expectations that awaited it, but there are just enough signature elements—slow-motion gunfights, flocking doves, religious imagery—to give true John Woo fans a much needed fix.

Copyright © 2018 James Kendrick

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