Best movie of this year hands down!

good back-story, and good acting

Dreadfully Boring

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

With a curiously similar plotline to Notorious (1946) this sequel offers much action and balletic violence and a familiar John Woo last act set piece. It's overblown, overcooked, and there is much less intrigue compared to the first mission. A descent in a vault has nowhere near as much tension as the first film. That said, Thandie Newton is winsome; Cruise is very capable as the spy trying to thwart a lethal disease outbreak; Dougray Scott is there to ensure the melodrama is maintained.

John Woo was already a highly acclaimed director by the time he transferred his trade to Hollywood. With the likes of A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Hard Boiled, produced in his native Hong Kong, he had earned his reputation as an action maestro, one capable of delivering a gun-fight with balletic grace, almost like watching poetry in motion. His Hollywood career started off okay with Hard Target and Broken Arrow, two forgettable if sufficiently entertaining vehicles for Jean-Claude Van Damme and John Travolta. He went up a couple of gears in 1997 with Face/Off, an outrageous thriller with two off-the-leash central performances, and it felt like Woo had finally worked out the formula of translating his chaotic brand of action and humour for American audiences. That was all before Tom Cruise suggested him for the follow-up to Brian De Palma's nifty thriller Mission: Impossible. M:I-2, as the posters branded it, not only manages to be completely hollow, but incredibly boring.While De Palma made some controversial changes to the formula of the original TV series, the first Mission: Impossible still embraced much of what was loved about it. It was grounded in a world of espionage and secret government departments, with Tom Cruise's relatively inexperienced Ethan Hunt at the centre of the unravelling plot. Woo throws the majority of this out of the window in favour of something more flashy and violent, changing Hunt from an opportunistic rookie to a leather-jacket wearing superhero capable of gravity-defying kicks and physics-defying driving. When we first meet him, he's free-climbing in Utah, in what is the movie's only heart-pounding moment. It establishes this new Hunt as a fearless adrenaline-junkie, and when he finally makes it to the top, he is handed his next mission, should he choose to accept it, via a pair of soon-to-be self-destructed sunglasses. The mission is to track down and retrieve a deadly virus stolen by rogue IMF agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott). To assist him, Hunt must also recruit professional thief Nyah Hall (Thandie Newton), who also happens to be a former flame of Ambrose.After the baffling plot of the first Mission: Impossible, it's something of a relief that Woo chose to keep things as simple as they are here. With films like this, the story only really serves as a way to get us to the next set-piece. The major issue is that Woo and writer Robert Towne (of The Last Detail and Chinatown fame) fail to inject any life into their characters, or at least give us anyone to root for. I like Tom Cruise and have nothing but respect for his desire to do all of his own stunts, but this smirking, floppy-haired version of Ethan Hunt comes across as a bargain-bin James Bond. Dougray Scott, who is one of the blandest actors around anyway, isn't helped by his one-note villain. Ambrose is simply an evil version of Hunt, only without the hero's plot armour. By the time Ving Rhames and John Polson are brought in for the final showdown, it's all too little, too late. By this time, Mission: Impossible II has already established Hunt as a one-man army, who naturally finds the time to romance his prettiest recruit when she's not busy trying to run him off a cliff. All of this could be forgiven if the action was on point. Guns are pointed dramatically and the camera swirls in slow-motion, but not even the obligatory flying doves can save M:I-2 from yawn-inducing mediocrity. It was a smash-hit at the box-office, but it's reputation meant that it would take six years for J.J. Abrams to save the franchise from an early demise.

So bad. Sooooooooo bad! The script was awful, the action was canned, the music was horrendous, and it's an unwatchable piece of trash.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout is coming out next week, so naturally I decided to watch and review every single movie of the franchise. I already wrote my thoughts on Mission: Impossible (1996) and now it is time for the second installment of the saga ... Where we, unfortunately, reach the bottom (better sooner than later).Even though the action stunts are still mostly realistic and very well filmed, they reach a point where I can't buy into them anymore. From two guys colliding mid-air after jumping from their bikes at high speed to explosions spread throughout the entire runtime, this film is pretty bad. 60 minutes into it and there isn't a single action sequence. The suspense and tension, which are a stamp of the first movie, are nowhere near the levels that they used to be, and the slow-motion is excessively employed.The story incorporates a love triangle between Ethan Hunt, Sean Ambrose, and Nyah that feels so strangely awkward and unnecessary. There is an evident James Bond vibe to this film, and that is precisely what wrecked it. This is Mission: Impossible and John Woo almost ruined the whole saga. Tom Cruise's character is an entirely different agent. He transforms himself into this sort of playboy kind of guy who has nothing to do with the Hunt that I know from M:I-1. The whole story hinges on the audience's feelings about his relationship with Nyah, but I can't care enough about Thandie Newton's character because she simply has no depth!Ving Rhames was by far the best secondary character in the first movie. In this one, Luther is just a computer nerd and his funny personality is gone. Dougray Scott plays a boring villain with generic motivations, and everyone else doesn't really matter. There is a severe lack of character development. Nevertheless, the saving grace of M:I-2 is definitely its cast. Newton is very charming as Nyah, Scott makes his awful script more believable and Cruise is ... Well, Tom Cruise.He continues to do all his stunts, and there are some "money shots" that he performs exceptionally well. To be honest, this film has some beautiful cinematography and a magnificent Hans Zimmer's score. Even when the action takes itself too seriously, these aspects at least make it bearable. John Woo does a lot of things the wrong way, but he adds some subtle details to his shots that become important to the plot later on.However, this is about it. There are so many cons to overwhelm the pros. The editing is all over the place. The pacing is no longer frenetic as it was in the previous movie. Like I wrote above, I have to wait more than one hour to enjoy some freaking action. The first half of the film is slow and tedious, while the second half starts to accelerate to finish in style. The ending has so much action that most of it becomes stupid. I mean, really stupid. Some moments are supposed to be taken seriously, but it is a tough task not to laugh at the hilarious set pieces.How can a sequel to such a fantastic action movie be so bad? Well, M:I-2 is the undeniable proof. There are so many things gone wrong with this one. John Woo transformed a confusing yet mysterious plot from the first installment into a hilariously awful screenplay. The plot is quite predictable, the story is emotionally weightless, and even the action goes to levels of dumbness that I've only witnessed in the worst possible films. A great cast and some nice technical details help counterweigh the cons, but Tom Cruise's lead saves the day.