M: I 2 PG-13
Starring Tom Cruise, Dougray Scott, Ving Rhames, Anthony Hopkins, and Thandie Newton
Eric says: ******* (7)
John Woo. He is why I so eagerly anticipated the second installment in the series. He is the only director who essentially makes love to the action with his camera. The previews looked dyno-mite. Then it started. Sadly, I was disappointed. Don't get me wrong, it was fairly entertaining. Cruise was great clearly doing most of his own stunts. It's just that the story never really went anywhere.
Minus a gorgeous scene involving flamenco dancers and a little "dance" that Cruise and Newton performed, it lacked that certain spark that was obvious in The Killer, Hard-Boiled, and the American-made Face/Off. I don't know exactly who to blame, though. I think that I'll settle on the screenwriters.
The Sony Playstation has a game out , Syphon Filter 2, in which an operative tries to track down a virus and antidote from a good guy turned bad before it can destroy the world. He also must retrieve it before the virus kills a female operative, that he obvoiusly cares about. To do this, he'll need to go globe-hopping, stopping along the way at a high-security lab to retrieve information. He also sometimes disguises himself as the enemy in order to go unnoticed at times when shooting the entire building up isn't an option. This is also the exact plot of the movie. Exactly.
I was still entertained enough to give it seven stars. The motorcycle scene alone merited as much. Now if we could just give Woo complete control of a project, there might actually be a movie make that lives up to my lofty expectations. Until then, if you disagree with this review, I will disavow any and all knowledge of its existance.