Review of Mission: Impossible II (2000) by Mahmus — 25 Sep 2020

This movie is a lot of fun, but also a lot of stupid.

I love John Woo and I love how silly his Hollywood films are, but he was not the right choice for a Mission: Impossible movie. He might bring some badass, over-the-top action, but he also brings a style that's more distracting than anything, and completely changes the characters of Ethan Hunt.

Hunt has never been a particularly complex protagonist (most times serving as a vessel for the audience to experience the action), but I've always loved the character. He's kind of a goof, he's good at his job and he's fun to watch. He's not is this edgy, too-cool-for-school action hero that gets laid on the job. I wanted to punch this Ethan in the face.

Also, the villain is way too hammy and only loses because he takes an eternity to pull the trigger on Hunt. I do think that his plan however has aged very well considering the current global situation.

It does one thing better than the first one though: it rarely gets boring. As much as I enjoy the original, it could get very dull very fast. Here, it never stops. There are boring scenes, sure, but they're rare. The infiltration on the villain's base was really cool.

I had fun with this movie, but that doesn't mean I think it's good. Thankfully, the series would only get better and better after this. It's a fun action movie, a passable John Woo film and a pretty weak entry in an otherwise consistently awesome franchise.