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Mission Impossible 2

Mission Impossible 2

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Mission Impossble 2
Review: Good movie with lots of cool special effects. M:I-2 was a sweet movie, with really cool stunts and even Tom Cruise made some of his own stunts. Scenes like the motorcycle chase were awesome, with explosions and cool motorcycle stunts. John Woo the director of M:I-2 really made a good action-thriller. The plot of the movie is also interesting it's about a virus which gets out of hand soon goes into Tom Cruise's girlfriend Nyah (Thandie Newton.) Thandie Newton was good person to play the role of Nyah Hall who was a thief. This movie at first was little boring,but soon all the action began. Watch the movie M:I-2 with outstanding effects and stunts.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: M:I-2 Mission Impossible 2
Review: Tom Cruise has hit the box office with his last latest hit M:I-2. With lots of action. He returns as Haunt. He has been on a mission to search the killer. The killer plans to destroy the city but when Haunt around, the killer gets killed as Haunt compeleted his mission and save the girl as he heads on towards his next mission that shall come out 4 years later- M:I-3 Mission Impossible 3.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: 10 year old girls may actually enjoy it
Review: .... I rented the DVD. Here're the highlights from my experience: Tom Cruise is an idiot and a little girl. It is really embarrassing to watch him making those silly faces all the time. John (whatever his real name is) Woo is a Chinese director who hasn't got a clue that he's not in Hong Kong anymore! All stunts are done very poorly. It is so obvious that there're wires attached to the guy every time he jumps, it makes you think that you are watching a spoof! Just look at the Cruise's character leg position when he jumps from one cliff to another in the beginning of the movie - you'll understand. The Tai/Indonesian girl was very annoying and pathetic - you really wanted her to jump from that cliff just to get it over with. Enough of mask changing already! A mask for any occasion in your shirt pocket??? What the idiotic motorcycle race, that takes almost the entire second half of the movie, has to do with Mission Impossible? In fact, what WAS the "mission impossible"? All in all, however, the flick is worth watching once - it will make you laugh a few times - mainly because of the ridiculous stunts and plot turns. The cinematography is nice - here and there, music is inappropriate though. Just don't expect any suspense or excitement or story for that matter - there is none. MI-I was a smart, stylish spy film with many notable characters, perfectly assembled cast, and engaging, unpredictable story line. MI-II is a joke and an insult to the Mission Impossible legacy.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: This film self-destructs.
Review: MI2 is an okay film. It has some very good action sequences, especially at the end, all covered pretty well by John Woo's direction (although, unfortunately, his slow-mo style becomes a parody of itself). The scenery and set pieces are nice, adding to the international feel of the IMF organization, the kind of diversity we see in Bond films.

But it's very disappointing, especially considering how inventive the Brian DePalma original was (can't beat that ultra-fast bullet train finale). It's kept from being great for many reasons. First of all, having a full-fledged romance plot between Cruise and Thandie Newton was a bad mistake. There are no scenes that develop the characters of Ethan or Nyah, it's just extended from the isolated, spur-of- the-moment sleeping scene. Therefore, there's no point in extending it to the length it is. It would've been better to keep the "romance" on the level of the temporary eloping that James Bond always engages in. At least then it wouldn't interfere with time that could be spent on action.

Second, the film is denied so much potential from the fact that it has to be a PG-13 film. Action films are just better when there aren't these restrictions placed on how much you can show. As it is, MI2 suffers greatly from being a PG-13 film, because it's not satisfying seeing the action like this: (1) Ethan shoots his gun, and (2) it cuts to a guy falling down- you never see where the bullets go. You never actually see them enter anyone. This is such a huge mistake on the filmmakers' parts.

More on the action: I was surprised at how little action there actually was. There are two brief scenes at the beginning (the plane crash and the short car chase), and then there's a long, barren stretch of about an hour before we see any real action again. Where's the balance? There's a big, 15-minute action finale at the end, and I'm all for that, but at least sprinkle some smaller sequences throughout the rest of the movie.

Furthermore, the action itself is good, quite good at times, but nothing original or special. Sometimes it got repetetive, and other times it even ripped its prequel off, like when Hunt descends down into a building on a rope, thus mimicking the security-room break-in scene from the original. The best sequence of the film is the final fight on the beach, and even then, it never reaches the level of great. That martial arts kickfest tries to be a fraction as entertaining as a typical fight in The Matrix. Take that scene, multiply the content and complexity by five, and speed everything up, and you have one of the many typical fights in The Matrix. (This proves yet again that creating good action requires just as much thought and effort as creating a good story.) My point is, in a time when action films are really staking new ground and becoming so unique, uninspired action like the stuff in MI2 just isn't special enough anymore to be called really good.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: some nice action scenes saddled by a limp plot
Review: I think John Woo better moves out of Hollywood. The nice movie budgets that he has now do not appear to give him only mediocre screenplays, and to make up, he has plagiarized his earlier works shamelessly. Or maybe he should persuade someone to fund a movie with Chow Yun Fat. The Killer was cliche-ridden, but that movie was a league apart from the mess that Mission Impossible 2 is. The problematic Mission Impossible 1 at least has some energy to spare.

The story line is very simple. An Australian biotech company invented something so nasty that a scientist decided to smuggle the secret to the Atlanta-based Center of Disease Control (don't ask why he did not simply go to the Australian government.) Some nasty guys got their hands on the secret, and it's Agent Ethan Hunt's job to discover and retrieve the secret. Very different than the TV missions and the first Mission Impossible movie, this time around, there is little subtlety in Ethan Hunt's mission (it's worth noting that this is the first movie in which Tom Cruise uses a handgun.)

Let's get some good stuff out of the way. Thandie Newton is simply gorgeous. Some action scenes, though absurd, are good enough to wake up the audience (such as the fall into the vent shaft.) The photography is very good.

The bad things are too numerous to count. Thandie Newton has nothing to do except standing there and looks pretty. The bad guys are too pat to be menacing (MI 1 has a plethora of interesting bad guys, including Henry Czerny in his menacing best, and of course, the always-excellent Jean Reno.) Tom Cruise hogged all the action scenes; why did he have to attack the compound alone? The climax goes on and on and on.

The DVD contains Woo's commentary, and a number of short segments on the making of the action scenes. While some are interesting, it gets a bit tiring to hear so much praise heaped on Tom Cruise. The segments also seem to indicate that the movie was simply nothing more than Tom Cruise and John Woo sitting around dreaming up action sequences, and it was up to the poor Robert Towne who had to figure how to make the whole thing comprehensible. Check the movie only if you are either a Tom Cruise or John Woo fan.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: MI2=poor film
Review: After enjoying Mission Impossible I was really looking forward to the sequel, but it was a major dissapointment. The plot is absolutley horrible. The only time I was impressed by this film was in the action schenes, still they were totally unbelivable. I was expacting for this movie to be a action thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat, but in turn it was a poorly scrpted bomb that did not impress me at all. I do not recommend this movie to any one, if you want to see it go to your local video rental store, it is not worth buing a movie in which you will only want to see once. I'm sorry for my very negative response, but this is how I feel about this movie.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: They forgot to add a plot
Review: It's amazing how a good concept can turn out so ugly in this movie. After watching the movie I looked to my wife to ask her a question but she was already asleep. Why would you spend so much on special effects and make a movie that plot wise would compare to Bill and Ted's Excellent adventure only worse.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Lets take a holiday in Australia Tom.
Review: Oh! please Tom, lets take a holiday in Australia. I want to see my Mum and Aunty Flo. And , hey, while we're there you can make a poxy, unbelievable crappy sequel to that 'b' grader you made a few years back. We can overkill on all the sights of Sydney and fill it full of cartoon-like fight scenes and irrelevant shots of Sydney Harbour and it don't have to have a viable story line or anything...what do ya think huh???? Do you think the mugs will go for it?? Hey, and while we're there we can catch the Olympic Games and everything. THIS MOVIE IS ABSOLUTE EMBARRASMENT

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Amusing, but it gets wearing...
Review: It begins well enough, I guess. We seem to be in for a re-make of Hitchcock's Notorious. Cruise needs to recruit a female thief to aid him in his latest impossible mission, and finds himself falling for her. And anyone can see why: she's beautiful, sexy, and a full and interesting person in her own right. Unfortunately, that doesn't last long, and she just turns into a plot device...

I must also say that I am getting tired of the John Woo never-ending action sequence chase, in which people do incredible forward aerial triple flips while delivering punishing slow motion kicks, and still manage to land in just exactly so that their hair falls exactly into place.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Put your brain on autopilot and prepare to be amazed...
Review: Let's get one thing straight right away: "MI:2" is NOT "Citizen Kane." In fact, it isn't even "Die Hard."

But it is one heck of a fun, entertaining movie, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. It's worth the price of admission for the trademark John Woo flourishes (doves, flapping capes, hyperkinetic action, etc.) alone, not to mention the stunning action sequences.

Tom Cruise returns as superspy Ethan Hunt, whose rock-climbing vacation (an eye-popping set piece if ever there was one) is rudely interrupted by his new unnamed boss (played nicely by Anthony Hopkins).

Hunt's mission is to stop a renegade former IM spy Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) from selling a lethal virus on the black market. To get to Ambrose, Hopkins tells Hunt to find the renegade spy's ex-girlfriend, Nyah (played by a radiant Thandie Newton). Of course, Hunt and Nyah fall for each other but not before they try to run each other off a winding mountain road (it's a John Woo flick, folks...deal with it). And of course, Ambrose infects Nyah with the virus, making Hunt's mission two-fold: to save the world AND Nyah.

Unlike the original "MI," which featured so many strange plot twists that it was often difficult to follow, the plot of "MI:2" is so transparent that you can see what'll happen about a half hour before it actually happens.

But the point of this film is not plot or characters, though it gamely tries to beef up both; this film is about action. And "MI:2" delivers in droves on this count, with about a half-dozen of the best action set pieces you'll ever see.

The only set piece that doesn't succeed grandly is one in which Hunt is dropped into a biotech company's heavily defended high-rise laboratory. The scene works, but it tries too hard to one-up the now-classic scene from the first "MI" film in which Hunt is suspended over a CIA computer.

The principal actors all turn in solid action-style performances (especially Cruise and Newton, whose chemistry is tangible), and the requisite summer-movie lines ("That's why it's 'Mission Impossible,' Mr. Hunt," Hopkins tells Hunt) are all present and accounted for.

Overall, if you put your brain on autopilot for a couple of hours, "MI:2" will reward you with a superior action experience.


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