Tuesday

I remember being quite bored the first time I watched Mission: Impossible 2. Since then, however, people have told me they quite liked it, so I decided to give it another chance. It starts with a plane crash and hundreds of innocent people dying. As I've mentioned several times before, this isn't a good way to get the sympathy of your audience. Deaths are ok, as long as they are compensated for adequately, and as long as you don't really care about the people dying. Anyway, aside from this, I have to say the plot was awful and the dialogue not much better. The slow motion sequences were unnecessary - like his star Chow Yun-Fat, John Woo doesn't translate very well. His stylistics seem tacky and overly-sentimental. There were some good set-pieces (jumping out the building and the face switch) but overall I think this film fails. An evil enemy compound surrounded by men in black with automatic weapons is laughable now. We've moved on from this type of action film. As the director of the last James Bond said: as soon as you hear the theme music you feel comfortable. Modern action movies don't let us feel comfortable. The tone of this film just doesn't work, especially considering the woman was essentially prostituting herself for the benefit of Tom Cruise's character. Bizarre.