Directed by John Woo

Rogue IMF agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) impersonates Ethan and steals a deadly bioweapon to sell to the highest bidder. Time for motorbikes!

John Woo’s style of slow-mo mega heroism, at the time, felt like a triumph of style over substance. A lot of the time, it is. There’s a seven-shot sequence of Thandiwe Newton walking down a jetty for no good reason and so much slow motion. So. So. Much.

But honestly Woo’s not the issue here. The action is great when it hits and the ending’s neat combination of capoeira, bikes and Ethan being a wiry little punk who doesn’t know how to lie down is big fun. The twin Bellerophon heists are great too, and Scott has enormous fun playing the brutal opposite number of Ethan’s flashy, acrobatic approach to problem solving. There’s a hint here of something the series would play with far more in later instalments: that the IMF is a collection of brilliant, incredibly dangerous individuals and they tend to break under pressure.

All of this is great, the locations are excellent and Tom Cruise is having fun even if he never gets out of second gear. The issue is the script. Newton is given nothing to do besides patiently wait to be fought over by the two leads, and she’s been refreshingly upfront about how difficult it was for her style to mesh with Cruise’s. It shows too, and there’s a tension to a lot of their scenes which sometimes works but too often plays into the unpleasant undertones the movie carries. Ethan is never less of an IMF agent than he is here, the wickedly smart problem solver of the first movie replaced by a ’00s standard issue long hair bike riding rebel.

Worse still, this is one of the most misogynistic scripts I’ve ever encountered. Newton is rendered down to an object for the two male leads to fight over, off-handed insults are used like punctuation and Sir Anthony Hopkins gets to deliver a speech so sexist as the current IMF chief it’ll make your nosehairs curl. By itself this would be bad.

Verdict: In a movie that plays as a far more off the peg action movie than its predecessor, it makes M:I-2 the least of the series, even now. 7/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

Highlights: The Bellerophon heist. The ‘WHAT?!’ opening. John Woo going full slow motion dove-flying John Woo. The moment where Cruise legitimately kicks a stunt man in the head by accident and they kept the take so you can see him realising what he just did.