Mission: Impossible II (2000) Review: John Woo's Stylized Sequel

Mission: Impossible II (2000) explained

The 1996 Mission: Impossible was a post-Cold War paranoia thriller, a puzzle of double agents, betrayals and a break-in that people still talk about. Mission: Impossible II (2000) is something else entirely. John Woo directed it from a Robert Towne screenplay, with Tom Cruise as both star and producer, and the film is closer in spirit to a Hong Kong action ballet than to a spy procedural. It is a standalone sequel to the first film and the second in the series.

The story is simple. Ethan Hunt teams with a thief named Nyah Nordoff-Hall, played by Thandiwe Newton (billed as Thandie Newton in 2000), to stop Sean Ambrose, a rogue agent and her former lover. Ambrose is played by Dougray Scott. He is after Chimera, a genetically engineered virus, and he holds the only supply of its cure, Bellerophon, which would make him a fortune once the virus spreads. The action moves from Sydney to a climactic fight on a beach.

Ving Rhames returns as Luther Stickell, the tech expert from the first film. Richard Roxburgh, John Polson, Brendan Gleeson and Rade Šerbedžija fill supporting roles, and Anthony Hopkins appears uncredited as Mission Commander Swanbeck, the man who sends Hunt on the job.

Mission: Impossible II (2000) announces its difference in the tone. That is the first thing viewers notice. Danny Elfman's retro spy-and-cocktails sound from the original is gone. In its place is a score by Hans Zimmer, with vocals by Lisa Gerrard, plus a metal take on the Mission: Impossible theme by Limp Bizkit. The film also uses the band's “Take a Look Around” and Metallica's “I Disappear.” Collider's Diego Pineda Pacheco called the score underrated in 2024, pointing to its Spanish influences, and that Spanish flavor is the best thing on the soundtrack.

Cruise's opening is a stunt: he performed a free solo climb for the first scene, filmed at Dead Horse Point State Park near Moab, Utah, without a safety net, and he tore his shoulder during a jump. It sets the standard for what follows. This is a film that wants to look physical, not clever.

Mission: Impossible II plot recap

Ethan Hunt is sent to stop Ambrose before the virus is released. To get close, he needs Nyah, who has a past with Ambrose, and the plan asks her to go back to him and gather information. Billy Baird, played by John Polson, joins the team as the free-spirited Billy, and Luther handles the tech.

The first meeting between Ethan and Nyah happens at a flamenco hall in Spain. It is the film's best scene, because the slow-motion photography, the music and the eye contact tell the viewer something about the two before either has spoken. Ambrose is a different kind of threat from the first film's villain: he is physical, vain and a former colleague, and he treats Hunt as a rival, not a target.

From there the film moves through a lab raid, a motorcycle chase, an infiltration and a final fight on a beach. The ending is a stripped-down duel, with Hunt and Ambrose fighting hand to hand and with guns at close range. It is spectacle, and it knows it.

The Woo touch

Woo had just come off Face/Off in 1997, and Mission: Impossible II (2000) is the film where he took a studio spy franchise into his own style. The film is full of his habits: slow-motion leaps, stylized gun duels, and characters who face each other at point-blank range. Every set piece is filmed with care. The violence is staged almost tenderly, as a dance between two people.

The score and the editing carry a lot of the weight. Zimmer was working on Ridley Scott's Gladiator at the same time, and Lisa Gerrard sings on both, which gives the film a feeling of epic scale that its script does not earn.

A troubled production

Oliver Stone was initially set to direct, but he dropped out after creative differences with the studio. John Woo was announced as director in March 1998. Cruise's work on Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut ran long and delayed this film, and the delay also hit Nicole Kidman's schedule on Practical Magic.

Cruise had also wanted to bring back Jack Harmon, a character who dies in the first film, but he and Woo could not find a plausible way to explain his survival, so the idea was dropped. The sequel is a clean break from the first film in cast as well as tone.

Dougray Scott had to decline the role of Wolverine in X-Men because of scheduling conflicts and injuries from a motorcycle accident. Ian McKellen was offered the Swanbeck role and turned it down, and Hopkins took it. Thandiwe Newton passed on Charlie's Angels to play Nyah.

Principal photography began on April 19, 1999, in Sydney and wrapped on December 15, 1999. Fox Studios Australia used four soundstages, and the shoot also used Los Angeles Center Studios. The original cut ran three and a half hours, and Stuart Baird made uncredited re-edits to get to the theatrical version.

Mission: Impossible II at a glance

• Released: May 24, 2000 by Paramount Pictures.
• Director and writer: John Woo directed, from a screenplay by Robert Towne. Tom Cruise produced.
• Lead cast: Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Dougray Scott (Sean Ambrose), Thandiwe Newton (Nyah Nordoff-Hall), Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell).
• Score: Hans Zimmer, with vocals by Lisa Gerrard.
• Box office: about $546 million worldwide, the highest-grossing film of 2000.
• Critics: a 58 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with praise for the action and criticism of the thin story.

Mission: Impossible II (2000) review: the verdict

Mission: Impossible II is the weakest entry in the series for anyone who loves the TV show and the first film. It trades a puzzle for a pose. The film is about Cruise zipping around on a motorcycle, big gun battles and a martial arts fight to the death on a beach, which is not what the original series was about.

Robert Towne's script does the film no favors. It swings from hammy to overwrought, and several lines about women in the spy business have aged badly. In particular, a few exchanges treat Nyah's role as a seduction assignment that needs no training, and the villain's comments about women are cruder than the film seems to realize. They are the weakest lines in a film that already has weak lines.

The performances are uneven in the same way. Cruise is as committed as ever, and the film leans on his physical presence from the cliff in the opening to the beach at the end. Newton is magnetic in the early scenes with him, and the film wastes her in the second half, when Nyah is mostly a person things happen to. Scott makes Ambrose a smug, physical villain with a taste for performance, which suits the film's tone, but he is given little to do beyond posing. Rhames's Luther remains the warmest presence.

And yet the action is excellent. The pacing is tight, the stunts are real, and every set piece has a visual idea. Woo's best work gives the film a sense of motion that few big-budget thrillers try for. In a spy franchise, it is a big, swaggering outlier.

The awards record backs that split. The film won the MTV Movie Award for Best Action Sequence, and it was also nominated for two Golden Raspberry Awards. Critics were mixed: the consensus on Rotten Tomatoes praises the action and notes the lack of substance. That is a fair summary of a film that is excellent in motion and thin at rest.

Where does it sit? The film was a commercial hit, and it remained the highest-grossing film in the series until Ghost Protocol in 2011. The third film, directed by J.J. Abrams in 2006, brought back some of the complicated plotting from the original show, a turn many fans read as a course correction.

The recommendation is simple: watch it for Woo, for the flamenco scene and for Zimmer. Skip it if you want the cerebral thrills of the first film. The soundtrack alone, with tracks such as “Seville” and “Injection,” is worth the price of admission.

Sources

• Mission: Impossible 2, Wikipedia — cast, crew and release details