The “Mission: Impossible” franchise is lucrative because it boasts a recognizable brand name, a superstar lead player, big budgets, top-of-the-line action sequences and, at least so far, directors blessed with visual panache.
But as the new John Woo-directed “M:I-2” underscores, it also lacks several elements that make a franchise do more than just transform box-office counters into ticket-spitting machines. Its hero, secret agent Ethan Hunt, conveys no discernible personality apart from that of star Tom Cruise. Aside from the usual superspy stuff, Hunt possesses no special gifts that would distinguish him from, say, James Bond, and he also apparently has no hidden vulnerable points, sense of humor or even a past.
While the Bond films present distinct dynamics between the infinitely more stylish agent 007 and each of his colleagues, “M:I-2” gives you no sense how Hunt and his fellow agents relate to one another.
Anthony Hopkins makes his series debut as the Impossible Missions Force boss, and he’s reduced to blandly relaying instructions to Hunt. (Perhaps that’s why he’s uncredited.) Ving Rhames, the only other returning cast member, plays Luther Stickell, the burly computer whiz who pulled Hunt from many a pickle in the first movie. Yet if not for a few lines of dialogue, you’d never guess the pair had ever met; their only exchanges are about logistics.
Ah, yes, logistics — that’s one distinguishing factor of this fledgling series, though not a particularly pleasurable one. Robert Towne co-wrote the 1996 movie and takes a sole credit here, and in both cases he seems to think that a presumably fun action movie requires plot convolutions as complicated as those he brought to his classic “Chinatown.”
Hunt’s mission this time is to track down a traitor agent, Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), who has stolen a deadly virus as well as its antidote. Ambrose’s plan is to unleash the virus in Sydney, but only after he has gained a 51 percent financial stake in the company that manufactures the antidote. Yes, this is a thriller of the new millennium; Ambrose doesn’t want cash, he wants stock options.
To infiltrate Ambrose’s operation, Hunt is instructed to track down a slinky thief, Nyah Hall (Thandie Newton), who used to date the bad guy. But in a courtship that involves his squeezing into a bathtub with her as she cracks a safe and a subsequent high-speed car chase on a winding mountain road, Hunt and Nyah fall in bed and love with one another. So Hunt is none too thrilled to deliver Nyah back to her ex.
This brooding love story is the key new facet to “M:I-2” — that and the stylized work of Woo. As he has shown in his emotionally charged Hong Kong shoot-’em-ups such as “The Killer” and the most recent and best of his Hollywood movies, “Face/Off,” Woo is drawn to characters who smolder.
Usually, however, the most intense feelings exist between the male hero and his male nemesis, who often represents the dark side of a mirror they share. Male-female chemistry has not been the director’s specialty, yet the early scenes between Hunt and Nyah have a certain zing.
A Woo specialty is homing in on the eyes, and Newton’s are expressive ones that dominate her face. There’s a great introductory shot of Hunt and Nyah making eye contact from across a dance floor in Seville, Spain, amid the unnaturally amplified stomping of the dancers, and later, in a vintage Woo romantic flourish, their eyes lock again as their cars spin out together, side by side. Woo’s camerawork (and that of cinematographer Jeffrey Kimball) establishes the connection between these two characters far more than the script does.
Plenty of other Woo trademarks are on display as well: slow-motion shots galore, thrillingly choreographed gun battles, glimpses of children at play and, of course, pigeons taking flight. Few calculated blockbusters boast such a personal imprint from its director.
That said, Woo may not have been the best match for this material. Although director Brian De Palma didn’t tell a coherent story in “Mission: Impossible,” he understood that audiences expected pure, frothy thrills and he whipped up some doozies, including that final crazy fight atop a bullet train as it zooms through a tunnel with a helicopter hooked to itsend.
The sequel offers no such tension release, opting for a broody mood that would befit a film with stronger emotional substance but triggers the occasional unintentional laugh here. The movie reportedly received a severe last-minute editing job, and maybe the original version was weighty enough to justify Woo’s approach. Now it just comes across as rather joyless. As great as the movie looks and as well-executed as the stunts are — including Cruise climbing a mountain and a climactic motorcycle chase — “M:I-2” never reaches the giddy heights that escapist action movies should scale.
As with the earlier “Mission,” the biggest problems lie in the screenplay. For a movie that should be raising the spy-film ante, surprisingly few tricks lurk beneath its cuff links; it keeps resorting to having a character tear off a fake face to reveal a different identity like in those old “Scooby-Doo” cartoons. The stunt, also used in the earlier film, is effective once, but it’s repeated over and over, as if everyone is walking around with sets of spare faces in their pockets.
Plus, “M:I-2” keeps calling on characters to take actions that don’t make a lick of sense. In a sequence that pales next to a similar one in the first movie, Hunt must sneak into a heavily guarded facility to steal something, but this time his rival, Ambrose, is anticipating his every move.
The crosscutting between Ambrose making predictions and Hunt confirming them is amusing, but given that Hunt is out to destroy something of value to his nemesis, why doesn’t Ambrose try to stop him before the mission is almost complete? Nyah’s moment of self-sacrifice also doesn’t hold up logically or emotionally, and it compounds the error of sticking this feisty, crafty character on the sidelines for much of the movie’s second half.
Because the love story never advances beyond its set-up, it seems progressively sillier. Meanwhile, Scott’s Ambrose doesn’t measure up to the movie’s often-replayed statement that to create a hero, you need a great villain. He lacks the charisma and force of personality to counterbalance Cruise’s Hunt, to whom everything and everyone ultimately is subservient.
Forget that the original TV series was all about teamwork. Even when a situation begs for a commando raid, Hunt goes in solo. Why? Aside from the star/producer’s ego, who knows? The character doesn’t come across as a particular renegade. He’s just a powerful blank.
And blanks, in a sense, are what “M:I-2” is firing. You see the flash, you hear the bang, but the impact never comes.
“M:I-2′
(star) (star)
Directed by John Woo; written by Robert Towne; photographed by Jeffrey Kimball; edited by Christian Wagner, Steven Kemper; production designed by Tom Sanders; music by Hans Zimmer; produced by Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner. A Paramount Pictures release; opens Wednesday. Running time: 2:06. MPAA rating: PG-13 (intense sequences of violent action and some sensuality).
THE CAST
Ethan Hunt ……………. Tom Cruise
Sean Ambrose ………. Doug ray Scott
Nyah Hall …………. Thandie Newton
Luther Stickell ………. Ving Rhames
Hugh Stamp ………. Richard Roxburgh
Billy Baird ………….. John Polson
