by Brendan Foley
Two Cents
Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
Tom Cruise’s endless quest to throw himself into the path of almost certain death for the entertainment of the anonymous masses has been going strong for decades, and he seems to be topping himself this week with the release of the Mission: Impossible franchise’s fourth sequel, Rogue Nation.
The series has been going strong for years, but even the most ardent defenders have a tough time with action auteur John Woo’s second entry, Mission: Impossible II, aka the awkwardly abbreviated M:I-2. Are these folks justified in their distaste or has everyone been missing the boat on an early-aughts action classic? We took a slow motion trip through fireballs, sparks, and Tom Cruise’s glorious, glorious hair to give you this full report.
This also marks our second Two Cents entry for John Woo, whose The Killer we just recently covered.
Did you get a chance to watch along with us this week? Want to recommend a great (or not so great) film for the whole gang to cover? Comment below or post on our Facebook or hit us up on Twitter!
Next Week’s Pick:
Bullets! Bar fights! Dan Stevens with no clothes on! Next week’s pick has something for everyone, provided everyone enjoys either violence or handsome British men with no clothes on. And really, who doesn’t? So join us as we partake in Adam Wingard’s The Guest, which is now streaming on Netflix Instant.
The Guest has been compared to everything from The Terminator to Halloween and was the talk of the cult cinema crowd last fall. Anomaly or new classic? You tell us!
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co!
Special Guests
This week we have three featured guests, representatives of the Alamo/Mondo/Fantastic Fest family who will need little introduction for many of our readers!
Greg MacLennan is a longtime Alamo Drafthouse personality known for both his event programming and video editing skills, which he’s taken on to a new role in their Drafthouse Films branch.
Fantastic Fest is probably the best damn film festival there is, and programmer Luke Mullen earns our respect and praise for carefully assembling and delivering this sweet bounty. He’s also a filmmaker in his own right with several editorial and technical credits.
And finally, three cheers for Mo Shafeek, Production Manager at fan favorite Death Waltz & Mondo Music, for doing his part to deliver beloved film scores in beautiful, collectible editions.
Greg MacLennan:It’s not a great Mission: Impossible movie, but it’s a pretty solid John Woo movie. To dismiss M:I-2 as a disaster is to abandon all love you have for John Woo. Each Mission: Impossible film has the distinct privilege of being the unbridled offspring of their routinely rotated auteur. De Palma made the taut, smart conspiracy thriller; Abrams made the melodramatic, fun one; Brad Bird made the spectacle filled one and John Woo made the one with insane gunplay, ridiculous slo-motion and a smattering of dove work. All of these things highlight why we love John Woo.
Woo has a way of making characters come off as more super-human and I think that rubbed audiences the wrong way when it came to the completely fallible Ethan Hunt. Pigeonholing a deep romance at the front end of the movie probably didn’t do anything to help but if you look past some of the film’s shortcomings, you have some of Woo’s greatest stunts in a bloated action epic in a stellar franchise. Watch it for the action and appreciate it for keeping the franchise alive by being its highest domestic grosser. (@alamogreg)
Luke Mullen:While M:I-2 is widely regarded as the worst in the series, I realized while watching it last weekend that I hadn’t actually seen it since its initial release, at least not all the way through. I was therefore pretty surprised to find myself generally enjoying it… for the first half or so. Let’s be honest, this is a dumb movie. But it starts out only occasionally dumb and progresses to full blown “what the hell are you doing” by about 2/3 of the way through. That said, it is maybe the Woo-iest of all John Woo films, packed to the gills with Woo-isms whether they make sense or not. You kind have to admire that even if the film itself doesn’t do it for you. (@ldmullen)
Mo Shafeek:Mission: Impossible 2 left such a sour taste in my mouth that I avoided M:I3 in theaters. That is a huge 180 for me, as I saw the original in theaters easily 4–5 times. I was the target audience, and they almost lost me forever. It wasn’t until I begrudgingly saw J.J. Abrams’ take, that I felt silly for letting one little movie ruin a whole franchise.
I revisited M:I-2 at home a year or so after Ghost Protocol came out, and divorced from the others it plays like a goofy, trifle of a movie that should be locked in a time capsule with every Limp Bizkit CD ever produced. It wasn’t terrible, just odd. For a moment I was at peace with the entirety of the M:I franchise. I felt free.
It wasn’t until this week, when marathoning all 4 films for the first time, that those initial feelings of hatred returned. And then I realized what it was: Watching M:I-2 after M:I one was a recipe for disaster. Nothing highlights the cinematic sins of John Woo’s gross, flame-tinged nightmare more than watching it directly after Brian DePalma’s charismatic, mostly-grounded (minus the train scene) take on espionage. (@moshafeek)
Our Guests
Brendan Agnew:I don’t want to defend Mission: Impossible 2. It’s not a great film — in point of fact, it’s not even a good film — and is easily the low point of the franchise as well as another unfortunate stumble in John Woo’s Hollywood career. To be honest, M:I-2 may be best-described as “Baby’s First Hong Kong Actioner.”
But I *am* going to defend M:I-2. Partly because, even a PG-13 watered-down John Woo is, hands down, a far better action director than most blockbuster filmmakers working in Hollywood. The use of slow-motion and multiple takes during action sequences is legitimately great, and makes the (mostly practical) stunts in the film shine like J.J. Abrams’ M:I:III could only dream. The movie’s a hot mess, but it’s also a fascinating display of Hollywood actors charging full-throatedly into Hong Kong action-opera melodrama, accompanied by a legitimately great Hans Zimmer score — the highlight of which is “Injection,” a musical cue and sequence of the film that just KILLS.
If nothing else, M:I-2 is commendable in taking a hard right turn for the series rather than simply doubling down on the aesthetic and tone of the first movie… And for when the dove flies through the flaming doorway. Don’t lie, you know that bit is rad as hell. (@BLCAgnew)
Matthew McCracken:I think I was about 11 years old when I decided this movie was pretty silly; I didn’t know how — perhaps it was because Emilio Estevez was in the first one, and I liked The Mighty Ducks, so it had instant credibility — but it was silly and therefore not great.
Well, now, upon revisiting this, I’m rather taken by it. It’s certainly wild — some of the dialogue, and that DOVE, for example, are laughably strange — but it works given the profound departure from the tone of De Palma’s Mission: Impossible. The soundtrack is especially strong in carrying the shift from intrigue-thriller to psuedo-mythological (super)hero adventure.
It really all sort of takes on the form of a marginally more grounded, spy version of Face/Off, given how the masks are consistently deployed and how Cruise and Scott are situated as dialectical opposites.
Basically, Mission: Impossible II is enjoyably out there (the moments that solicit grandiose claims to its insanity are, ultimately, minimal); and it starts the series’ cycle through various manners of grandstanding as “look at what Tom Cruise can do” action vehicles very effectively. No, seriously, that motorbike showdown at the end is a really straight up fantastic set piece! (@mattmccrac)
The Team
Justin:Mission: Impossible II is the second best M:I film I’ve ever seen, albeit I’ve only seen two. That’s not to say that it’s bad… not at all, in fact. It is a ton of fun and significantly better than I remembered it. It has the hallmarks of John Woo in the action sequences, the tone, the overall look of the film, big explosions, and (of course) doves. And, despite the fact that I don’t fanboy over Woo the way some folks on this site do, I am a fan of his work.
So, in summation, I found this to be a fun watch from beginning to end. I enjoyed the acting of Cruise and company. I found Thandie Newton gorgeous throughout. I thought Dougray Scott was a compelling villain. So, yeah… I liked it a good deal.
My favorite moment was when Mission Commander Anthony Hopkins presented the role of Thandie Newton’s Nyah in the mission…
Hunt (Cruise): She’s got no training for this type of thing.
Commander (Hopkins): To go to sleep with a man and lie to him? She’s a woman, she’s got all the training she needs.
Yes, the joke is sexist, but it gave me a nice chuckle. (@thepaintedman)
James:Throughout my life’s cinematic journey, a few films have stuck out as being so appalling that they have actually engendered an irrational emotional response of hatred in my wizened core. Which is highly annoying as, at the end of the day, it’s only a movie.
One such film is Mission: Impossible 2. After the fun, knowing spy-jinks of Brian De Palma’s M:I, to be presented with what is in essence the world’s most expensive shampoo commercial starring Tom Cruise is a vanity project too far. Oh it looks so very glossy and expensive, but seems to be an excuse for Cruise to live out his stuntman-dreams with some spectacular but empty set-pieces infused with an over-abundance of slo-mo.
Considering it was directed by John Woo, possibly the greatest action director ever, there’s even less of an excuse for how bad M:I-2 turned out. Featuring a dull plot about bioweapons, an ineffectual Dougray Scott as the villain (who passed on Wolverine for this?), and Thandie Newton flouncing around distracting everybody, M:I-2 is a wasted opportunity on every front. And just when you think it can’t get any worse, Limp Bizkit turn up and curl out the theme tune. (@jconthagrid)
Ed:Mission: Impossible II marks the point in time where Tom Cruise was his most attractive. What with that flowing hair and John Woo slow motion? Come on now, is it getting warm in here? Never mind that this entry in the franchise also gives us Ethan Hunt at his least dimensional. As an action movie and fight choreography fanatic, I’ll always have a soft spot for M:I-2. With Cruise himself performing killer hand to hand combat, along with Director Woo’s iconic gun ballet style, the third act of M:I-2 will forever be intensely satisfying. This kind of visceral fight work is normally relegated to DTV fare these days. It’s like a final swan song to the era when one lone hero (this entry features the least essential “team” element in the series) could kick a gun up from the sand, do a shooting flip in slow motion, get the bad guy, and save the day. Too bad the first two acts are inert and allow for virtually no emotions to be felt by the finale. I love seeing Cruise in the hands of Woo, but M:I-2 lacks in the intrigue and complexity departments where other entries in the series thrive. (@Ed_Travis)
Frank:For years, Mission: Impossible 2 was the sequel I couldn’t remember much of, though there was certainly a lot about it that I did like. After watching it again for this week’s Two Cents, it all came back to me.
Let’s get the bad out of the way first, shall we? The movie definitely choppy in places it shouldn’t be, mainly owing to different artistic approaches by director John Woo and screenwriter Robert Towne. The two men have made their names legendary in the film world that a collaboration between them would make any cinephile drool. Yet there is never a solid rhythm established between screenwriter and director resulting in a somewhat uneven film.
Yet what does work, works VERY well. There’s the great assortment of character actors such as Thandie Newton, Dougray Scott, and Anthony Hopkins in a fun role. Hearing him utter the film’s title alone is almost worth watching the movie. There’s also the wickedly cool theme track by Metallica (the first time the band ever composed a song for a film) and the true beginning of Tom Cruise’s second career as a stuntman with the series’ penchant for eye-popping stunts. Not the series’ best, but still an energetic ride. (@frankfilmgeek)
Brendan:Turning the Mission: Impossible series into a heroic bloodshed action-romance film (for one movie anyway) is a very cool idea, and taking such a hard left turn from Brian De Palma’s original established this as an auteur driven series. And certainly there are individual moments and beats where John Woo’s incomparable action eye, and his knack for the operatic melodrama, really pays off. The entire last half hour of the film is essentially one sustained action set-piece, and Woo seems positively giddy on the level of (oh so wonderfully practical) mayhem that he gets to unleash on Cruise.
Unfortunately, these excellent isolated images and moments are caught up in a story that resolutely fails to engage, geared around the black hole of suck that is Dougray Scott and Thandie Newton. Having an unimpressive villain and/or love interest isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, but when the whole film is built around these two putzes and their romance, it digs a hole that the film can’t escape. My eyes glazed over every time Scott so much as spoke… can you believe this motherfucker was almost Wolverine? God in Heaven.
Anyway… M:I-2 is not a terrible film, it’s just a depressingly less-than-good one. Bummer. (@TheTrueBrendanF)
Austin:Now that episodes 3–5 of the franchise have developed a secondary continuity, it’s easy to dismiss M:I-2 as the weird outlier. But in 2000, there was nothing but a blank slate, and the choice was made to deliver the opposite of Brain De Palma’s slow-burn account of paranoia-soaked subterfuge. And while I’d hesitate to call M:I-2 my favorite of the series, it’s certainly (partially because of its age) the one I’ve seen the most.
The villain is believably dangerous as Hunt’s equal (both Dougray Scott and sidekick Richard Roxburgh are highly underutilized actors), and there’s solid chemistry between Cruise and Newton. Everything is enhanced by Hans Zimmer’s amazing score which ranges from soulful flamenco, to sensitive strings, to unbelievably epic bombast, to a hard rocking revision of Lalo Schifrin’s original theme. For years the score was one of my most-played albums.
One of the biggest criticisms of the film is that the action is not realistic. The laws of physics are ignored; bodies fly through the air and cars explode at the slightest provocation. But that’s the point. John Woo doesn’t cater to your “realistic” films, he makes operatic wuxia-inspired fantasies. It may not look like the Shaw Brothers, but look deeper.
I will, however, concede that there’s a ridiculous amount of facemask shenanigans. John Woo would just roll up in the director’s chair like
Oh, and that killer knife-to-eye scene? Chills. (@VforVashaw)
Did you all get a chance to watch along with us? Share your thoughts with us here in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook!