Mission: Impossible 2 Movie Review: A Weak Entry in the Series

Mission: Impossible 2, a spy action thriller directed by John Woo and starring Tom Cruise, is the second installment in the Mission: Impossible movie franchise, based on the 1960’s TV series of the same name. Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt, an agent of the Impossible Missions Force (IMF), tasked with recovering Chimera – a genetically-modified, deadly disease – and Bellerophon – the cure for Chimera.

This is the second movie in the series, and it is the second movie in the series which deals with a rogue IMF agent. This time around, while flying on an airplane, Agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), wearing an Ethan Hunt face mask, steals Bellerophon, the cure to Chimera. Then, for no other reason than to let the audience know that Ambrose is the baddy, he uses sleeping gas on all the passengers and flight crew, aims the autopilot directly at a mountainside, and then escapes with his cronies, parachuting to safety with Bellerophon, but unaware that he does not have Chimera. 

Ethan recruits Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandiwe Newton), a professional thief and Ambrose’s ex-girlfriend, to pretend she is returning to Ambrose in an attempt to get information about Chimera and Bellerophon. Then it is all cat-and-mouse spy stuff. Who will stay one step ahead? Who is actually someone else beneath an impossibly perfect mask? And who will be injected with Chimera? If there is a note that you’ve heard from one of these movies, then you will hear the entire song in Mission: Impossible 2.

Mission: Impossible movies are famous for their action sequences, especially since the lead, Tom Cruise, is known for performing his own over-the-top stunts. These action sequences work best when they flow organically from the plot. The opposite tactic is utilized in the M:I series: instead of writing a script with stunts, the stunts are considered first and then the plot is welded around the stunts. Usually, this technique has been effective; however, this is the downfall of Mission: Impossible 2.  

While the stunts are entertaining, they rarely have more than a tangential importance to the plot. Consider a dangerous early scene in which we first meet Ethan Hunt as he is rock climbing near the top of a very steep cliff. Is Hunt on a mission? No, he is on vacation. One could argue that this stunt is characterization, but it just doesn’t feel that way; instead, it feels like Tom Cruise had a fun idea that involved climbing a rock. As a whole, Mission: Impossible 2 is a tolerable spy thriller, but it just does not live up to the potential achieved in other entries to the series.