Mission:
Impossible-2
Starring Tom Cruise, Dougray Scott, Thandie Newton, Ving Rhames
Directed by John Woo
Rated PG-13
Short Summary: Tom Cruise prevents the spread of a deadly virus by doing a lot of flips.
Extended Summary: First off, what in the world does this movie have to do with temping? There are two possible answers, 1) nothing, or 2) Tom Cruise is sent on various "missions", or "assignments", or "jobs", by his "employer", or "agency", which is sort of what I do. The difference is that my jobs entail sitting behind desks and answering phones, and his require him to kill a lot of people while showing more teeth than a panicky chimpanzee.
For the purposes of this review, let's go with the second answer. Oh, and as usual, let me give you a WARNING that I will give away absolutely everything about this movie, so if you haven't seen it yet and plan to, don't. The movie sucks. Just read my review and get on with your life.
Anyway! The movie begins with an elderly foreign scientist type guy injecting something into his arm. He gets on an airplane with Tom Cruise, whom he calls "Dmitri". We suspect that this might not really be Tom Cruise because he says vaguely threatening things to the old man such as "You'll soon be with old friends" and "You keep calling me Dmitri, you really shouldn't", and "I'm probably going to karate-chop you in the neck and pull off this fake Tom Cruise mask." We are also tipped off by the fact that Cruise is not grinning charmingly in this scene, that is to say, not stretching his lips wide enough to accept two lanes of traffic in order to show off his teeth.
Sure enough, it's Dougray Scott wearing a Tom Cruise mask, and he steals the old man's briefcase and he and his evil henchmen friends jump out of the plane as it crashes. This is an important scene because it sets up the movie and shows us that it's hard to take a Scottish guy seriously as a villain. I think it's the goofy accent.
Then we see a scene of Tom Cruise climbing a mountain cliff. At one point he slips and then hangs there by his fingertips, swinging around the way rock-climbers do when they want to show off their muscles and let everyone know they are Tom Cruise and not a stuntman.
Once he gets to the top of the cliff, a helicopter flies by and shoots a missile that sticks into the mountain. Inside the missile are high-tech sunglasses that show Tom Cruise his mission. Really. Not making that up. Anyway, the mission is for Tom Cruise to recover something called Chimera, and recruit an attractive woman to have sex with. Mission: Booty Call!!!
After a thirty-second credit sequence that probably cost more than Risky Business, we see Tom Cruise meet up with Thandie Newton in a four-hour slow-motion sequence. Long, dark hair, pouty lips, flawless skin, and perfect features are shown in exquisite detail, and then we get a look at her, too. Hubba-hubba! Obviously, these are beautiful people and it is rubbed in our faces that we are ugly and substandard.
Newton, a professional thief, steals a necklace while she sits on Tom Cruise's face, which could be either to heighten sexual tension or dim the glare from his teeth. He tries to recruit her but she refuses, giving them a chance to have a car chase scene. In this scene, Cruise and Newton drive expensive cars while trading quips over cell phones and running other cars off the road. Tom Cruise calls out "Sorry!" whenever this happens, while the innocent people's cars, which they saved money for years for, are destroyed, while their infants heads are no doubt dashed against windshields, and while they're left stranded and injured on this winding mountain road. But, no matter! This chase is designed to show how gutsy and independent Thandie Newton's character is, although when her car goes off the cliff, she has to be saved by Tom Cruise and have implied sex with him.
Anthony Hopkins shows up as Cruise's boss, and fills us in on some stuff. It seems Dougray Scott is a former agent turned bloodthirsty killer, something no one seems too surprised about. I guess while the agency was tied up developing stone-piercing sunglasses-carrying projectile weapons, the HR department got a little lax with their PSYCHOTIC KILLER SCREENING TESTS. We find out that Thandie Newton was Dougray Scott's girlfriend, and Hopkins figures Scott will tell her of his plan, since boyfriends generally confide things to girls they like, such as their plans to unleash deadly viruses upon the world. Tom Cruise is reluctant to let her attempt this, since they are very close now that a few hours have passed since they met. He folds his arms and scowls, determined that since he can't show off the huge slabs of porcelain in his mouth, he'll show off his biceps instead. (Hell, if I had any, I'd do the same.) He also reveals his sensitive side to her, letting her know he cares about her by screaming in her face, in the way intensely attractive people seem to be able to both put up with and get away with.
Once Newton is having implied sex with her old boyfriend, Tom Cruise brings help from his agency to spy on her. There's some Australian guy who laughs at things for no reason because he is wacky, and Ving Rhames, who was in the first movie, where he didn't do anything but stare at computer screens saying things like "Uh-oh" and "Whew", drawing big laughs from the audience. Tom Cruise figures out that Chimera is a deadly virus and Bellerophon is the antidote, because in the movies all deadly viruses have antidotes that make everyone instantly okay, in order to have a good guy get injected with the virus but saved at the last moment.
We see Dougray's multi-million dollar house, which goes along with his speedboats and motorcycles and other expensive lifestyle accoutrements, indicating that he is so well off there's really no need to kill lots of innocent people and steal viruses for money. He tortures his henchman by cutting off part of his (the henchman's) pinkie, which really shows a need for a Henchman's Union.
The guy that owns the company that makes the deadly virus is kidnapped, apparently by Dougray Scott, and Thandie Newton is visited by Tom Cruise. But, it turns out that Dougray Scott is really wearing a Tom Cruise mask to see if Newton is loyal to him, and it's Tom Cruise who has kidnapped the company-owning guy. There's a lot of mask wearing, and while the effect is cool, we are really sick of it already. (This is a shame, because it's about the only thing from the TV series that carried over.) Tom Cruise decides to break into the building where the disease is kept, in order to destroy it, after learning that Dougray Scott doesn't have the virus, only the cure. We are excited, because this means that Tom Cruise will soon be dangling from wires for some reason.
It seems the best way into the building is to bungee jump from a helicopter into a giant vent that Ving Rhames can open with his computer. When it's time to jump, Rhames tells Cruise to wait because he can't get the vent open, but Cruise jumps anyway, because he knows the film needs some suspense, and we might be fooled into thinking that the vent won't open in time and Cruise will be smashed flat against the closed vent, ending the movie. Luckily, Cruise falls in slow motion, so Rhames gets the vent open in time, and sure enough, he dangles inches over the floor, which is a Tom Cruise signature thing that will be in all his movies from now on. I mean, how cool would it have been if dangled over Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men? Or over Paul Newman in The Color of Money?
Tom destroys the virus, instinctively knowing how to use virus-destroying computer software, but Dougray Scott shows up when there is only one little bit of virus left. Tom Cruise could have destroyed all the virus but he paused while contemplating a flashback (it wasn't even his flashback to contemplate, it was the old man's flashback, from the beginning of the movie -- not sure how he pulled this off), or perhaps pondering how cool it would be if he could only grow some big white teeth from his biceps, we don't really know.
What follows is a John Woo shootout, consisting of lots of flipping and shooting and people holding guns in both hands, and no one hitting anything but glass and things that give off sparks. The goons can't hit Tom Cruise because he keeps doing back-flips and half-gainers, but Tom Cruise can kill them pretty easily because they are preoccupied with things like aiming their guns.
Newton injects herself with the last of the virus, showing just how resourceful and stupid she is. Tom Cruise expresses how concerned he is by screaming in her face and leaving her there, jumping to safety through a hole in the building. While he's falling, face down, he does a 360 degree flip, so he's now falling, um... face down again, I guess, and pulls his chute.
Now it's a race against time to get the antidote into Newton's body before she turns into a pile of goo! Cruise and his team follow Dougray Scott to their meeting where they will get money for the virus. Cruise beats up a goon, knocking him unconscious by kicking him in the stomach while doing a 360 degree flip. He dispatches another by spinning him around and kneeing him in the stomach, rendering him unconscious as well. (You know, I'm sure it hurts getting kicked in the stomach, but instead of silently slumping over unconscious, I would think the normal reaction would be "ooooOOOOOLLLGHHHH!!!!" or "ARRRGGGHULLPHH!" or "GRAAAGGH MY ABDOMEN!" or something noisier and less unconsciousy.) He punches another henchman repeatedly in the head, pausing to talk to Ving Rhames over his radio, which is in his ear, while the henchman stands there patiently, waiting for the each blow.
There's some more mask wearing, which yeah, I know it looks neat, but, I dunno... maybe they could think of something else once in a while? I guess they just have a lot of extra masks lying around.
Cruise swipes the antidote and blows up some stuff, taking time to put on some sunglasses in case he has to get involved in a motorcycle chase, which he promptly does. H does a wheelie on the front wheel of his motorcycle while spinning it in a circle, knowing that this will make it easier to accurately fire his gun at a moving car. He also tricks another car into getting smashed by an eighteen wheeler, then speeds off, leaving the driver of the truck to spend the rest of his life with the horrible guilt of having killed a carload of, as far as he knows, innocent people.
Then Tom Cruise gets chased by Dougray Scott, who is also on a motorcycle, and they shoot a lot of bullets at each other. While shooting a car can make it explode, both of their motorcycles can withstand a large number of bullet holes. Tom Cruise even points the gun behind him while aiming in the sideview mirror, which probably would have worked had he been on one wheel and spinning in a circle and maybe doing a flip while talking into his ear. Then they do that scene from the trailer where they ride toward each other and jump off their bikes at the last second, crashing into each other in midair. Both of them are perfectly okay from this collision, so they scuffle on the beach, seemingly for hours. There's lots of punching and kicking and flipping.
How does the fight end? Well, I don't want to give it away, but rest assured, it doesn't end with Cruise beating Scott to a pulp, then turning his back on him and walking away, and Scott pulling a gun out of somewhere, his ass, perhaps, and gloating over the fact that he has a gun while giving Tom Cruise a chance to get yet another gun, and shoot him in slow motion. No way.
Thoughts: Okay, I know this is a particular kind of action-genre and I shouldn't be so picky. I realize that in a gunfight, you can't have the hero taking a bullet to the lung and collapsing in a heap. I've seen a lot of John Woo films, and I've enjoyed them. I know that turning a gunfight into a ballet is kind of his thing, but it doesn't really work in this movie for some reason. Possibly because it's hard to stage a ballet in a big pile of crap.
Scoring: I ain't mission this movie. One fake Tom Cruise mask out of ten.