In which Gerry Hayes just can’t stop humming that tune…
Mission: Impossible II, 2000.
Directed by John Woo.
Starring Tom Cruise, Thandie Newton, Dougray Scott.
Screenplay by Robert Towne.
Oh, god, who has the energy? It’s another Mission Impossible. That means insanely implausible and monstrously complicated and convoluted story-lines. It means The Cruiser running about a lot and jumping on or off things. Or hanging from things – he loves hanging from things. It means far-fetched technologies that, somehow, still manage to just look like crappy props. Really, who has the energy?
This MI has been directed by John Woo which means lots of slow-motion jumping on or off things and lots of slow-motion diving while shooting two handguns at the same time. Oh, and lots of slow-motion hanging from things. I hear Cruise insisted on hanging from something.
And Woo doesn’t disappoint – or rather he does. This film is almost entirely in slow-motion. It’s crammed full of slowed down scenes. If Mission: Impossible II were played at normal speed, it would only last about fifteen minutes.
To the bewilderingly complex plot: Cruise is Ethan Hunt, of course. While hanging from a cliff (you see, he loves it), a pair of sunglasses is delivered to him in a rocket fired from a helicopter (this sounds even more nuts when it’s written down). They’re magic sunglasses that can talk and give him information about his next impossible mission before exploding in slow-motion.
So, his mission – and he chose to accept it – is to enlist the help of, professional thief, Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Newton) and report for a briefing. He manages to recruit Nyah by being charming in slow-motion while running her off the road and over a cliff. After some slow-motion sex, they learn that a bad-guy, Sean Ambrose (Scott) has stolen some buckets of bird flu named after characters from Greek mythology (thereby proving the writer is a learned and erudite man). In order to retrieve it, it’s necessary for Nyah to sleep with the bad-guy and for The Cruiser to hang from things.
Oh, and it’s also necessary for pretty much everybody to wear flawless disguises to confuse you into thinking the plot is more clever than it actually is. For instance, Ambrose disguises himself as Hunt and his disguise is so utterly perfect that you think it’s the real Hunt… right up to that edit just before he pulls off a ridiculously unconvincing rubber mask and simultaneously gets taller.
Obviously, with their advanced technology, spy-prostitutes, and Ethan’s hanging abilities, the good-guys triumph. Granted, it’s necessary to shoe-horn in a few more slow-motion scenes: Ethan diving while shooting two guns, Ethan handsomely riding a motorcycle, Nyah’s hair fluttering in the wind while doves flap about – that sort of thing – but good prevails.
As MI’s go, this is not even very good. It’s got Woo stamped all through it like a stick of seaside rock and all that style just makes for a complete lack of atmosphere. It’s the most vapid of the bunch and is really only entertaining if your brain works at a speed where the slow-motion scenes seem well paced.
Or if you like hanging from things.
Read more I Sat Through That? right here.
Gerry Hayes is a garret-dwelling writer subsisting on tea, beer and Flame-Grilled Steak flavour McCoy’s crisps. You can read about other stuff he doesn’t like on his blog at http://stareintospace.com or you can have easy, bite-sized bits of him at http://twitter.com/gerryhayes
Originally published October 4, 2009. Updated November 21, 2022.
