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Where do M:I-2’s problems begin? Laying complaints at the feet of the film’s soundtrack may sound odd, but a Metallica closing credits number and Limp Bizkit’s nu-metal interpretation/interpolation of the theme music not only feel wrong to close out the film, they suggest a completely different feature that has taken place over the prior two hours. Academy Award-winning screenwriter Robert Towne was co-credited on the screenplay for the first Mission: Impossible and received sole credit for M:I-2. Instead of Chinatown originality, there are homages and rip-offs and a concerted effort to recall Towne’s own screenplay for Tequila Sunrise.

The first half of the story involves plot points and references mashed up from any number of Hitchcock films. To Catch a Thief is directly called out. The strategy of a spy sending in a non-professional to get romantically involved with a target (after said spy has fallen for his charge) is straight out of Notorious. The stylish compound where Sean Ambrose (Scott) lounges around with his henchmen is a nod to James Mason’s abode near the face of Mt. Rushmore in North by Northwest and Ambrose’s relationship with his right-hand enforcer Hugh Stamp, which is built on all sorts of suppressed romantic feelings on both sides (Ambrose can slice off a tip of Stamp’s finger with a cigar cutter, but he can’t kiss him!) is a parallel to the relationship of Mason’s and Martin Landau’s characters in that film as well. All of these ideas are noticeably, if uninterestingly, set up in the first half and not one of them pays off in any meaningful way in the second half, which is dominated almost entirely by action.

A break-in to a scientific lab where Hunt must destroy samples of a biological weapon (M:I-2’s version of a MacGuffin) attempts to blatantly up the ante on the similar scene in the first film, but devolves into the expected glass-shattering shoot-out, with Cruise and his gun seemingly unable to miss against Ambrose and a dozen of his goons. Cruise’s unexpected exit out of the building at the end of the scene provides a quick jolt of adrenaline but then the storyline futzes its way through to get us to an extended finale featuring what can only be described as motorcycle-fu and a final mano-a-mano between Hunt and Ambrose.

The bloodlessness of this encounter and most of the others in the film combined with the rapid-fire editing to suggest excessive violence feel like pale approximations of Woo’s late '80s and early '90s Hong Kong glory days. Cruise is filmed multiple times in dreamy slo-mo whipping the tail of his jacket up behind him, the better to slide out a hidden gun from his waistband and take aim at...life and if he never quite achieves Chow Yun Fat zen, it’s a fairly amiable approximation for these shores.

What Towne and Woo aren’t able to approximate is a through-line for Nyah Nordoff-Hall, Thandie Newton’s ill-conceived character. She and Hunt strike palpable sparks during their first meeting and Towne creates a genuine feeling of conflict for Hunt in sending her back into the arms of her prior boyfriend Ambrose to help determine his role in the theft of a supervirus. But after giving Nyah an incredible scene of sacrifice halfway through, Towne all but disappears her until the closing minutes. I am not saying Nyah needed to be joining Ethan in double-fisted gun orgasmica, but it’s a waste of an actress and a character. On the flip side of that, they do find a way to keep character actor and Armin-Mueller Stahl doppelganger Rade Sherbedzija popping up, even after his character dies in the first three minutes.

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