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Mission Impossible 2: The worst film I've seen in some time. Tom Cruise is afflicted with Michael Douglas disease. He is only effective when playing a weak character (as in "Jerry Maguire" and "Eyes Wide Shut", also "A Few Good Men", "The Color of Money" and "Rain Man"). Otherwise, he is an aimless rager ("Magnolia", "Born on the Fourth of July") or a dolt ("The Firm"). In MI2, they attempt to take his boring and hyper-competent character from the first film and make him a sexy, vulnerable, loner of an action hero. It fails miserably. He is charmless and uninteresting. And for the first time, because John Woo has him flying in the air in slo-mo all film long, as a viewer, you have the vantage point to see that Tom Cruise is the size of Tom Thumb (full disclosure - I am the size of Tom Index Finger). Plot stupid. Gadgets lame. Woo, without really great, scintillating actors and a smart, edgy scripy (see Travolta and Cage in "Face/Off") can only toss the diminuitive Cruise from one silly scenario to the next. Thandie Newton, as Cruise's love interest, is attractive, but waxen. Anthony Hopkins picked up a check. And the ending was tantamount to getting your hand caught in a french fry cutter. Grade: F.
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