MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2
by Sasha Stone

Tom Cruise, as co-producer along with Paula Wagner, is smart enough to know that a dream team couldbe assembled to make Mission: Impossible 2. Brian De Palma, the much-maligned director of the original, is out - John Woo, master of the Hong Kong shoot-em-up, is in. Robert Towne, who wrote the first M:I, is back; so is Ving Rhames. And of course, there's the BMOC, our king and captain, Tom Cruise, at the helm. Add to that, generated buzz hotter than a whore in church - no matter how bad it was, it would still be a hit.

So how bad is it? Laughably bad at times, especially during the slow middle, while you wait for the plot to move out of the way so that you can get your money's worth of non-stop action like you've never seen - non-stop Woo, to be precise. Unfortunately, though, there is an 800-pound gorilla of a plot. And it doesn't seem to want to move out the way. Once it does, however, nothing else seems to matter.

The story picks up with Ethan Hunt (Cruise) choosing to accept his next impossible mission while clinging to a cliff. He's got to steal back a stolen virus so powerful it can render its victims moist, dead and bloody in exactly 20 hours. There is an anti-virus, of course, that figures into the story, such as it is. There are a host of money-grubbing executives weaving in and out of the plot as the deal, such as it is, progresses. Essentially, the villain, Ambrose (Dougray Scott), an ex-comrade of Hunt, is planning on selling the virus to the highest bidder.

Ambrose, a formidable opponent, but no match for the superhuman magic tricks Hunt possesses, has a weakness - an ex-lover named Nyah (the delicious Thandie Newton) who, conveniently, has a weakness for Hunt. Nyah is sent back into the arms of Ambrose, implanted with an electronic tracker that Luther (Ving Rhames) monitors from an endlessly circling helicopter. Shades of Hitchcock's Notorious color the plot. There's even a nod to the Master in a racetrack scene where Hunt and Nyah hook up to exchange information, even speaking to each other while gazing through binoculars. Oh, Mr. Towne, you do love to drop references.

Act two's climax is wonderful enough, with yet another reference to the first M:I movie - Cruise floating into an office strung up like Peter Pan. But that's as much as Woo will allow. In a not-very-surprising plot twist, Hunt is out-smarted by Ambrose, which sends us tumbling into the climax of act three. From then on, it's pure Woo - endless guns with endless ammo, expendable bad guys, and an ultimate standoff between good and evil.

With each new set piece Woo throws at us - those infamous doves, for example - our adrenaline surges: he can't do that; wow, he's doing that! But he can't do that!

You bet he can, and he does - sending Cruise into the land of the make-believe, where heroes can flip upside down, kick with the left foot, then with the right, in mid-air. There's a car chase (dampened slightly with the odd appearance of a harmless white Ford sedan blown to bits). There's a snazzy motorcycle sequence, which has Cruise lifting off his bike, surfing the blacktop, then getting back on, like a cowboy trick rider. If you hadn't already figured out that you were being toyed with by a director who has no intention of playing by the rules, the motorcycle chase should seal the deal.

There are those pesky facemasks, back from M:I, that are probably the most hard-to-swallow plot device. However, considering the director's passion for duality, good and evil as it exists within one person, it's forgivable.

Tongue-in-cheek melodrama is to be expected. The difference here is that you don't have John Travolta's hammy performance to tell you for sure that it's okay to laugh - it's supposed to be silly and magnificent and scary and absurd, all at the same time. Cruise plays it a little too straight, humorless (has he ever been funny?), with the intensity of a yoga master or a monk - focused, somber, unbreakable.

Even still, Tom Cruise has never looked lovelier, just barely edging out Thandie Newton. The two of them appear to be fighting to preserve a certain kind of beautiful person facing extinction. Each time they appear onscreen their combined beauty is almost blinding.

Woo, who could probably make Dennis Franz look like a Roman statue, gives Cruise more than he's ever gotten from any director, even with a performance just a notch above male porn star Jeff Stryker. He's especially good with women, as in one of the most exquisite scenes in the film, when Nyah returns to Ambrose - the look on his face as he watches the sum of his desire arrive by sea is enough to prove, once and for all, that Woo films do not need dialogue. He can do it all with images, and facial expressions, and action.

So what does all this mean? M:I2 closed Memorial Day weekend with an estimated 71 million dollars. It will surely go over $200 million before it leaves theaters. It will go on to break records overseas, no doubt.

As for Cruise, he's scraped off the slime critics lopped on him from Eyes Wide Shut and has pronounced himself king of the hill once and for all. Ving Rhames was woefully underused, but will emerge from this as successful as any - not burning out, not fading away. Thandie Newton will likely get the cover of In Style Magazine. And Robert Towne? He's a shoo-in to write M:I3.

As for John Woo? Hopefully, his global bankability will find its way toward better scripts.

CineScene, 2000