Mission Impossible 2 (Mission Impossible 2 (DVD))

Member Name: polydeuces

Product:	Mission Impossible 2 (DVD)
Date:	09/08/08 (0 review reads)
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Having read many of the reviews for this film it was interesting to see it on video and compare. Many reviews had spoken of it as being disappointing and not credible as opposed to being incredible. Well actually I enjoyed it. It is probably better to watch it without preconceptions and just enjoy it for what it is an enjoyable action movie.

Tom Cruise is not one of my favourite actors I have to say. He always seems a little too good and too clever in the roles he plays. However in this he is quite passable, after all it is a role in which you have to suspend belief anyway so you may as well do it watching Tom Cruise as anybody. Thandie Newton plays the love interest with the inevitable twist in her past. I would not be able to name anything she has ever done before or since but she again fulfilled what was needed.
The film was directed by John Woo who has a penchant for these increasingly action packed films. The films are also dramatic but the direction techniques do not really build tension. As a viewer you marvel at the stunts and the pyrotechnics but you do not really have to engage your brain too much to follow the story. Even if you cannot follow it, it does not really matter as another action sequence will be along soon. In this respect it is a typical American box-office action film. I have been fortunate to watch a film among an American audience and the reaction is very different from an English audience. An American audience lives the film, whooping and whistling and this film would be accepted at its face value.

The plot is a sub-James Bond evil madman (Dougray Scott) intent on destroying the world or at least a bit of localised mayhem by releasing a deadly virus. Having released only he can effect the cure thus giving the opportunity to blackmail the world. Cue : evil laugh. Cruise plays Ethan Hunt as the top agent of the Impossible Mission Force (IM, next task to make the Tories electable) who can stop him. Thandie Newton (daft name, that) falls for Hunt having previously been the evil madmans moll. This is all standard stuff and the skill is then in the telling and for me it was well done. I watched it with my teenage son and he thought it was excellent. There is a slow section in the middle which needed something to relieve it a bit but the climax is suitably exciting.
As you expect like the Bond films there are a few innovative gadgets and some implausible fight sequences but they are no more ridiculous than the Bond efforts. Having had a panning from the British press reviews when it was released I suggest that could be because we prefer our own version or is there a hint of xenophobia in the film press.

The acting is all perfectly adequate. The roles stretch neither the actors or the audience and no one is going for Oscars here. The script too is undemanding and you do not need excessive levels of concentration to understand the gist of it all.
This is pure escapism. Films are not just there to inform, they are there to entertain, thrill and stir the emotions. Mission Impossible 2 does that. It does exactly what it says on the tin. So be an American for a night, get the video (or DVD) get into the film and cheer him on.

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