Mission Impossible 2 starts with Agent Hunt hanging dangerously high up on the side of a
cliff face. When I was in school, I rarely tried during physical education
classes because I didn't give a shit and I'm allergic to pain. However there
was this one time that they got some ropes out and tried to make us climb up to
the ceiling. I watched the little fuckers in my class showing off by scuttling
up them and so decided I'd prove just how easy it was. I jumped up at the rope,
grabbed on and began to heave myself up. The teacher presumably shocked by my
sudden effort began to cheer me on in a bid to encourage me to keep going.
Genuinely surprised at how well I was doing I started climbing higher and
higher and higher. Sadly though this boost in confidence was short lived and
things suddenly got difficult. Deciding I'd proved my point, I gave up and like
a fucking idiot just completely let go of the rope.
I hovered in mid-air for about a second
which was enough time to realise that I was probably meant to climb down
safely... and then I began to fall. As I plunged towards certain death I was
preparing for the inevitable splatter of my exploding corpse when to my
surprise I landed comfortably on my feet. Despite having just performed an
almost superhuman display of rope climbing it turned out I'd actually only
gotten about four inches off the ground before thinking, 'fuck this', and
attempting suicide. This is just one of the many reasons that I am not Tom
Cruise.
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| ...Something has gone wrong.. |
People think that Cruise is mental because
he worships aliens and belongs to a mad cult. But in reality he's actually
mental because as this opening sequence proves he's clearly got a
fucking death wish. Despite the success of the first film it's obvious that the
main reason for Agent Hunts return is so that Cruise can see just how far he
can push himself before being killed in some horrific accident. I say it's
obvious as his him doing a few stunts is pretty much the only thing that's
carried over from the first film. This has a different cast, director, belongs
to a slightly different genre and also unlike its predecessor, it’s massively
shite. If the first movie was a great night of cheap cider and mystery-meat
kebabs then this second one is very much the next mornings miserable ritual of
puking into your hands because the toilet's too far away.
After the twisty, complicated
story of Mission Impossible, the sequel sadly decided to dumb itself
down so that anything advanced enough to grow fingernails would be able to
follow it. I know action films can be stupid but this
seriously makes The Transporter Series look like Kieślowski's Three Colours Trilogy in terms of its
importance and ambition. The story this time involves a rogue IMF agent
stealing a lethal disease called Chimera and that's pretty much it. Presumably
because Chimera sounds like a particularly itchy STD, Hunt is tasked with
retrieving it which turns out to be about as exciting as watching an old man
attempt a four hour yawn whilst scratching his balls.
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| "Numbers go up to three-hundred?" |
In order to accomplish the
mission, Thandi Newton is recruited because she's the bad guy’s ex-girlfriend
and IMF wants her to fuck the answers out of him. Newton plays a master thief
who is so painfully thin that her stealthiness has to be attributed to the fact
that she's ninety-percent nonexistent. Also speaking of the villain, he is
played by Dougray Scott who here displays about as much acting range as a wet
turnip that's been rolled around a barber shop floor. Imagine Gerard Butler but
after he's screamed out all of his charisma and had a bump on his already
lobotomised head and Dougray Scott is pretty much what you'll be left with.
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| "Your mission, should you choose to accept it..." |
Whilst we're listing cast
members it's also worth noting that in the last Mission Impossible blog I pointed out that the
idea of spies constantly ripping realistic masks off their face was a bit Hannibal Lector. Well it
turns out I was right as everybody’s favourite psychopath turns up here as
Ethan Hunts boss. To be honest I guess being a secret agent would explain how
Lector was able to escape a maximum security prison and remain on the run for
years afterwards. Hannibal wasn't a genius but rather trained and possibly
being protected by the fucking Government. With his youth and skill on his side,
if Jason Bourne ever got the taste for face then I think we'd all be fucked.
The film itself was directed
by John Woo who’s had a bit of a schizophrenic career over the last few
decades. On the one hand he's the director of such action classics as Hardboiled
and The Killer but then on the other he also helmed such forgettable
clag-nuts as Paycheck and Windtalkers. Sadly Mission
Impossible 2 falls into the crappy half of his portfolio and I think I've
figured out why. All of his good films where made in China whereas the rubbish
ones began when he started working in Hollywood. The problem with this film
isn't the action which, as expected from him, is all very fast paced and over
the top. It's how long it takes set pieces to turn up and how boring the bits
in between are. Like all of Woo's American films, the script is just fucking
dull. Maybe- and this is just a theory... but maybe he just can't read English
very well. Perhaps this looked like a good script because he only recognised
words like, “bang” and “punches”. Perhaps he also misunderstand stage
directions such as, “an unbelievable fight scene” and took it very much at face
value. Not that I'm slagging him off as I couldn't even attempt to read Chinese
with each of their words just looking like a dodgy market version of a
sportswear logo.
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| But where did the dog turd go? |
Ultimately though the biggest
sin of Mission Impossible 2 is in what it seeks its inspiration from.
The previous film clearly borrowed elements from Hitchcock whereas this one
unforgivably takes notes from Michael Bay. If ever a film is destined to fail
then it's when it aspires to meet the offensively low standards achieved by Bay’s
turgid back catalogue of braindead bollocks. There's no doubting that Mission
Impossible 2 feels more like Armageddon than North by Northwest which
is a huge shame. For proof of that just check out the overly dramatic scene
near the end when Hunt confronts the bad guy and you'll see what I mean. He
walks into the room following a glowing white dove whilst the villain’s eyes
reflect a fire in the room. The scene has all the subtly of a kick to the tits
and is sadly more forced than a quick fist up the poop-hoop. If this franchise
was an act on a talent show then the sequel would be like watching someone
follow Penn and Teller by making some dog shit disappear by eating it. After
two long hours the last line of the film is Cruise turning to Newton and
romantically saying, “Let's get lost”. Considering that by now they have
physically bored the nipples off me, I actually couldn't agree more.
Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.
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