“… I didn’t hate Mission: Impossible 2, but it was remarkably worse than the first film.”

Mission: Impossible 2 was not as good as the first film, but I’m not exactly sure why. Well that’s not really true, it will just take me a while to explain my thoughts on the matter. Mission: Impossible 2 is, as the titles suggests, the second installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise and is directed by John Woo. That fact alone should be enough to tell you that Mission: Impossible 2 leans more heavily into the ‘action’ genre than its predecessor, but what went wrong?

The main problem I had with Mission: Impossible 2 is that its really boring. The entire movie, despite focusing more on action, makes the story about Ethan falling in love with a girl and being all cute together. When we are finally introduced to the villain he is about as interesting as sand, and then the movie continues to be boring up until the climax which goes balls-to-the-wall insane in terms of action. Its just really inconsistent.

And John Woo’s style really shines through in Mission: Impossible 2, namely making it a super cheesy romp that makes you roll your eyes most of the time. I have no hatred towards cheesy action movies, but theres a limit and John Woo came pretty close. It was obvious that Mission: Impossible 2 wanted to be the ‘fun’ sequel, but it came off as obnoxious most of the time. The movie was filled with terrible one-liners, and premises that did their best to boost Ethan up to almost superhero heights. It was kind of taxing.

And can we talk about how much John Woo seemingly loved the whole ‘realistic mask’ idea from the first film? That shit gets used like 6 separate times throughout this movie. It got to the point that I didn’t trust anything that I was seeing, which is a dangerous precedent to set for your shitty action movie. If characters are constantly pulling off masks to reveal that they are other characters, your audience is feeling constantly betrayed and also grows less invested in the story. And honestly its just kind of lazy after a certain point.

Overall I didn’t hate Mission: Impossible 2, but it was remarkably worse than the first film. I can appreciate cheesy action movies, but when your franchise is set up as a spy-thriller genre maybe take one or two more movies to wade the audience into the campiness that is John Woo films.

I give Mission: Impossible 2 a C