Once again, we are continuing on our countdown to Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation with our Ass Whoopin Wednesdays presents the Mission: Impossible series. For today’s film, we are looking at Mission: Impossible 2 which was the sequel that took four years to make and once again stars Tom Cruise (Top Gun) as our favorite IMF Agent Ethan Hunt. This time around, a deadly virus that was created by a scientist named Dr. Nekhorvich (Radé Sherbedgia) called Chimera which has been stolen by a former IMF agent named Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) and he plans to sell it in the market for lots of money. With the help of a former girlfriend of Ambrose (Thandie Newton), Hunt has to destroy both the virus and the cure before it gets into the wrong hands. The film also stars Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction) as Luther, Anthony Hopkins (The Silence Of The Lambs) as Swanbeck, Richard Roxburgh (Van Helsing) as Hugh Stamp, John Polson (Swimfan) as Billy, Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges) as McCloy, William Mapother (The Grudge) as Wallis, Dominic Purcell (Prison Break) as Ulrich, and the film was directed by John Woo (Face/Off). Let’s check out some stats from the film before we get into the review of it.
You can definitely tell the difference between the first film and this one just by who the director of the film is which happens to be John Woo. Just from that little piece of info, you know that the action sequences are going to be more epic and more outrageous because let’s go for broke after all. For one, Ethan Hunt knows some bad ass martial arts moves in this film and his kills/knockouts count triples in this film than what it was in the first film as he has 26 kills/knockouts overall. Once again, Ethan has no origin story to speak of in this film, but he does gain a love interest and he has a sexual conquest with her. In the film, she is infected with Chimera virus so Ethan is on the hunt for the cure before it is too late and the big boss is eventually defeated. Now the question going into this film is do I think that it was better than the first film? To be honest with you, while the action was turned up a notch for this film, I still find the first film to be better than this one. There was more of a clever story in the first one than there was in this one, but this film is still pretty good in it’s own right. One thing that it has working for them is the cinematography as we get some great shots of Sydney, Australia during the film. While the rest of the series is not available to stream on Netflix as we speak, the first two films in the series are and you should definitely check them out if you love the whole action spy espionage thing that so many of us have craved for years which is why we continue to love James Bond. I am going to give this film four fists out of five for a final grade.
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