New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

In order to further advance my expression of my disappointment, I think it’s important to look at M:I-2 in the context of the series as a whole, where each film has a different director, and that director’s authorial vision is allowed to stand out to a large degree, and as the film fits in with Woo’s decade-long “American experiment” (as I am calling it) where he came to Hollywood and between 1993-2003, directed six feature films, two made-for-TV movies and a failed pilot (apparently for a Lost in Space reboot).

With a $91 million opening over an extended Wednesday-to-Monday holiday period and a final gross of $215 million domestic, Woo’s take on the further adventures of Ethan Hunt is the most successful in the series and his career, from a purely financial standpoint. After delivering the well-received and unexpectedly blockbusting Face/Off for Paramount back in 1997 (when Nicolas Cage, Action Star was a new suit that audiences were still enjoying breaking in), Woo chose to go the director-for-hire route once again instead of a more personal project.

Beginning with Hard Target, and continuing with Broken Arrow and then Face/Off, each of his films had grossed more than its predecessor and allowed Woo increasing leeway for both his highly stylized violence/action sequences and his feel for the grandly melodramatic passions of his characters to take center stage. M:I-2 continued the building success on the money end of things, but with a $125 million budget at his disposal and the fate of a franchise on the line, Woo’s signature vision, which he was no doubt hired/recommended for by Cruise, suffered.

Somehow Brian DePalma and J.J. Abrams sidestepped this fate. DePalma’s take, my personal favorite, is very much his own beast — until that shoehorned-in bullet train/helicopter climax — and the air of 1970s paranoia and governmental mistrust that pervades the story and Hunt’s pursuit of the truth, feels like DePalma in Blow Out mode. The defining image, Hunt breaking in to the CIA from above to enter a secure computer room and upload a file in utter silence while dangling from a wire, is perversely thrilling and completely antithetical to the normal visceral charge of a big summer action set piece. To a lesser extent, this is true of the conversation between Hunt and one of his superiors (played with steely resolve by Henry Czerny) at a restaurant that climaxes with a literal bang and the endlessly quotable line from Hunt, “You’ve never seen me very upset.”

J.J. Abrams’ take on Mission: Impossible has been the best received from a critical standpoint and finds favor among many of the staffers here at BOP. Philip Seymour Hoffman certainly embodies a more boo-worthy and ruthless villain than Dougray Scott or Jon Voight is able to. Abrams finds his preferred balance charting the conflicts between the equally worthy yet stress-inducing travails of his protagonists in their personal and professional spheres, and stirs the pot with a requisite amount of double-crosses and game-changing plot twists. If it on occasion feels like a missing arc in one of the final seasons of Alias, Abrams pulls off the neat trick of keeping the ridiculous spy elements at a light summer action simmer while his characters' emotions are allowed to bubble over.

Continued:       1       2       3       4