Mission: Impossible II (2000)
It must be at least 20 years since I last saw this. Was I ever that young to have actually liked this mess? Along with Die Another Day, this could be seen as the end of the cheesy 90s action flicks.
I am okay with the plot even though it is pretty nuts, but as a premise for the absolute money hungry evil villains - it gets things going. The problem lies with the execution that flirts with the level of being “so bad it is good”. My main problem is that it doesn’t feel much like a Mission Impossible movie. Tom Cruise lacks the charm and wit here and Thandiwe Newton doesn’t work at all in my opinion. As for gadgets, there is not much other than the super zoom satellite and the facemasks gets comically overused - lacking the impact it had in the first movie.
John Woo manages to get something cool out of the last 30 minutes of slow motion gun action and air kicks, but still very far from the level of his Hong Kong movies.
Rating: 2.5