Mission: Impossible II (2000)

Rogue IMF agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) and his team of rogues steal the lab-made disease “Chimera” a crazy Russian scientist made for an Australian pharma company. Given what happened in the first movie, the IMF seems to have a bit of a problem with rogue agents committing supervillainy.

Fortunately, still tiny, not quite as shouty anymore, super agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, smugly grinning like a loon for the whole first act for reasons only known to himself; the movie even makes it part of its villain’s motivation instead of telling Tom to cut it out) is put on the case. Before really starting on the mission, he is supposed to recruit sexy jewel thief Nyah Hall (the artist now known as Thandiwe Newton). The recruitment is more like a short courtship dance, and before you can doubt anyone’s professionalism, they have already copulated and fallen for each other deeply (at least for this movie). Which gets a bit awkward when Ethan’s boss (an Anthony Hopkins cameo) explains that Nyah is a former girlfriend of Ambrose’s and supposed to help them via good old sexspionage instead of thievery.

That makes Hunt so grumpy, he’s going to stop grinning for the rest of the movie, so good job there, Anthony Hopkins. But needs must, so sexspionage it is. This being a Mission: Impossible movie, a heist and various action scenes are of course going to follow.

This being a John Woo movie, a misplaced pigeon, as well.

Four years after the first MI movie, Cruise has settled into his star persona, which leaves us with less strained attempts at acting and a leading man who is quite a bit more assured in front of the camera, but also one who really insists on showing off in as many scenes as possible, and can demand to get more close-ups than, say, the rather more talented and close-up worthy Newton. There’s also at least one pointless vanity scene showing Cruise rock-climbing early on, which, combined with the antiseptic vibe of the “romance” between him and Newton’s Nyah, makes the first act a bit of a slog.

There’s little interest in team work as a core value of the franchise here anymore, either, so that the thing can turn into even more of the Cruise show.

Scott isn’t great shakes as a villain either, and never feels like the properly oversized threat towards all that is right and good in the world he needs to be to work against Cruise’s plot-armoured Hunt.

To be fair to MIII, there are a quite a few great action sequences in here, but then, great action sequences are only half of what made Woo one of the greatest action directors of all time. The other half is pairing the action with an operatic sense of melodrama, blood with tears. You can see where the film wants to deliver this all-important connection, but with a weak Scott and a Newton that’s never allowed as much space as Cruise, there’s really nobody for the film to connect Cruise with properly, so the melodrama feels hollow and never satisfies emotionally .