Mission: Impossible 2 2000, Rated PG-13 Paramount Home Video

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Starring Tom Cruise, et al. Released to DVD on November 7, 2000.

As a film critic, you sometimes have to turn off the rational part of your brain, and ignore the seemingly sound logical reasoning that states: if you put the world's best action director (John Woo) together with the world's most popular actor (Tom Cruise) in a $100 million sequel to the popular Mission: Impossible franchise, you will, in return, receive a competent action flick. You can't listen to reason here, because this supposition is terribly, terribly wrong. Cruise is back again as daring, impetuous IMF agent Ethan Hunt. Hunt is contacted to recover a deadly, man-made virus that has been stolen from its creator by a group of IMF agents gone bad. Written by Robert Towne, MI2's script is abysmal. There are numerous, unexplained jumps in setting, conversation and action, and more instances (5) where the characters disguise themselves as one another and reveal their true identity by pulling off a mask at the end of a scene than in any number of Scooby-Doo cartoons. Woo's white doves and motorcycle trickery are present, but in what capacity? The near constant quick cuts and edits reduce the impact of the important scenes and the slow-motion footage of Cruise cartwheeling across a room to kick bad guys in the head boring and contrived. Everybody (especially Besieged's Thandie Newton) is wasted in this poorly thought out and formulaic actioneer. MI2 makes the original film look like a masterpiece in comparison.