After quite entertainign Mission Impossible I the second installment turned out ... terrible. As if the screenwriters didn't know how to fill the 2 hrs with action the overuse of heroic slow motion scenes is horrible. You almost might need a barf bag if you can't stand slo-mo every five seconds... for 15 seconds. I am amazed they did decide to push on with more M:I movies after this one, then again, these turned out much much better even if it would be hard to beat that lousy piece of crap of a movie.

"Ambrose" (Dougray Scott) is a disavowed IMF agent with a grudge. He is determined to procure and release a deadly hybrid "chimera" virus onto the streets of Sydney so he can push up the share price of the company that wins his auction to acquire it; and that can also manufacture the antidote "Bellerophon". It falls to "Ethan" (Tom Cruise) and his inventive gang of regulars to come up with a way to thwart this plot. To that end, he recruits the brassy thief "Nyah" (Thandiwe Newton) who gets to play a real love interest with "Ethan" whilst feigning one with "Ambrose" to get close to him and learn his plans. On the face of it, this is an ideal screenplay for this franchise, a sort of "James Bond" theme with plenty of location cinematography, action scenes and the odd gadget. Sadly, though, Scott is just not very menacing as the baddie and the story is really under-developed. The characters appear to be almost grinning their way through the unremarkable dialogue, and John Woo creates then recreates the action scenes as if it were just some sort of cartoon feature. The standard of the production is high, the staging of those action scenes is strong and well photographed, but the story just doesn't ever really get into gear and at over two hours, it's a pretty weak and insipid outing for just about everyone. Not a patch on the first film.

And here is where I gave up on the series. I liked the first one, it was 3 Days of the Condor with action, not as brilliant acting, not as talented a cast, but action packed fun. And then suddenly Tom has long hair and it's has no plot, there are a lot of pigeons all the time, the action looks corny and.... I checked out, I really did. Even the memory cards, they are spies that do action and they aren't using Compact Flash Cards? It made no sense, it was imagery over plot. It stank. But they made a lot more, and I might have watched the Ghost Recall or whatever it was called on, but don't really remember paying attention to it. This one took me out of the franchise.

69/100 Ethan Hunt must stop a deadly new virus from falling into the wrong hands. The directing styles from Brian De Palma (1st film) to John Woo is pretty stark making this far less an M:I movie and far more a James Bond action flick. Not a lot of time is spent on the depth of the characters focusing almost exclusively on Ethan and the villain and the romantic scenes just felt awkward. But the film is loaded with Woo's trademark car & motorcycle chases and stunts, shootouts galore and non-stop, superbly choreographed fights making it all a very fun popcorn matinee. -- DrNostromo.com