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Movie Reviews:Mission Impossible 2
The last one was kinda James Bond for Dummies and this one sorta follows suit. The plot is pretty cheesy: evil biotech corporation creates killer bio disease and a cure... controlling the virus makes the cure valuable... its more complicated then that, but if you can't figure it out before the movie tediously explains it (complete with ridiculous comments about stock options that are so stupid that they make MI 1's scene about the new artificially intelligent risc chips seem like grad school level CS) then you probably should just wait for the next Pokemon movie or something 'cuz this ain't rocket science (hell, it isn't biotech either ;) There's an evil corporation complete with an evil CEO, an evil terrorist group complete with a lunatic leader and a suffering sidekick or 2.
Anyway the "Plot" is really just an excuse to show us lots of explosions, car/motercycle/helecoptor chases etc etc, along with gratuitous cleavage shots from the hot co-star (which is worth the price of admission assuming you go to a matinee), and Tom Cruise performing stupid backflip karate kicks that might work if they were in Cowboy BeBop, but don't even come close when actual human actors pretend to perform them in slow motion.
So its the roller coaster hollywood film and if you like the genre, you'll probably enjoy this one. It starts off fast and furious, but by the end I was yawning... like so many movies these days, it blows its wad in the first half hour: it just can't sustain the heat for the full 2 hours to keep you interested.
If you like your action fast and your plots brainless, you'll like this movie. If you just want to go for a good ride, you'll enjoy it. But if you gotta choose between Gladiator and MI2, grab your battle axe.
The thing you have to keep in mind about this movie is that it is an action flick. Even more then that it is a John Woo action flick. The plot is not going to be impecible, and the action scenes are going to show his style.
You have to keep in mind that the target audience for a movie like this is not 18-35 geek crowd, its the 13-24 testosterone crowd. They don't care if the plot has a few holes in it, so long as 1)The explosions are cool. 2)The fight scenes are cool. 3)They get to see something to titilate them.
Take a look at the Bond films, they follow a very similar formula, and have been wildly succesful. They say imitation is the sincerist form of flatery and I think that it shows true for the Mission Impossible movies.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
This didn't really strike me as a true "Mission: Impossible" story. Rather, as Taco mentioned, it was more of a creative outlet for John Woo. The stunts are _great_ - but after awhile there's only so many ways you can kill a guy. This movie started wearing on me at about the 1:15 mark, and never came around after that.
If you ask me, the first M:I was a lot better. For starters, it was true to its roots: it had an actual team of people doing all sorts of cool secret agenty stuff the whole time. There was a mission. It was impossible. And so on.
MI2 really wasn't like this at all. There are three competing strands or directions in which this movie meanders: Woo's fetish with windy slo-mos and 2x Berettas, Cruise's totally incongruous, undying love for Thandie Newton (more on that later), and same vague, yarn about diseases and Greek gods. They take precedence in that order.
Now, if you ask me, that is just stupid. The original MI never dealt with sex in the manner this film does. Nor did it have such incomprehensible plots. I don't deny the directors a little creative freedom here, but through the whole movie I kept thinking about how they were trying to turn Ethan Hunt into a James Bond, minus the smarm. Cruise literally gets smitten (in the span of three minutes, another hiccup in the plot), and from there out his whole motivation is to get this girl back and screw the pants off of her. There are a few cool gadgets, but nothing like the first movie.
The final straw was the portrayal of Ving Rhames. Now, I thought he really stole the show in the first movie. His swagger was the perfect foil to Cruise's cold, calculating, "Kittridge - you have never seen me upset" demeanor. Compare that to this movie, and he is reduced to an annoying caricature of himself, kind of an amalgam of John Shaft and a corner street pimp. He utters lines like "That bastard put a hole in my Armani" with total seriousness. Ugh.. I found myself yearning for the much cooler, much geekier Rhames in M:I, the guy who drooled over kickass hardware and didn't seem to worry too much about his suit.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Roman Legion was using Mongol recurve bows
What you saw were Syrian auxiliaries with their typical bows. These exact archers are depicted on Trajan's (beginning of 2nd century AD) column. Shorter bows (the ones that you mistakenly call Mongol) were in use at least in the 6th century BC (that's right, almost a millennium earlier) by the Scythians.
This is roughly equivalent to Mel Gibson using a machinegun in Braveheart.
I wanted to let this comment stand in all its singular glory. Feeling good about yourself yet?
The Roman Legions used javelins.
During the Roman empire (as opposed to republic), soldiers became less dependable and therefore less likely to use the sword to good effect. The spaces between cohorts lessened and the battle line again evolved to a phalanx. Pila (which is what you are thinking of) evolved to longer and sturdier spears, appropriate in a phalanx type formation.
12th century ballistas in the 3rd century AD.
The same evolution required more artillery for the defense of camps and for softening up the enemy's line of battle. This is perfectly illustrated in Gladiator. What you assume to be 12th century was in fact in widespread use in the 4th century BC.
The stirrup, allowing effective cavalry, also had not been invented.
I did not notice stirrups. OTOH, I was not looking for them, as you were with your expert eye for such things. I was amused, however, by your implication that effective cavalry did not exist since there were no stirrups. Go tell Alexander's Companions, or Attila.
an EMPEROR challenging a SLAVE to a duel?!?!?
Commodus, Caligula and a couple of others fought in the arena while emperor. Sue your history teacher.
Doesn't anyone go to the movies for just fun anymore? Do you always have to be intellectually stimulated by every movie you go to? Geez, people, lighten up. Have some fun, relax, blow some steam. If you thought it sucked, you probably went expecting a deep flick.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
But you're geeks! Is that even allowed?
(runs off to check rulebook)
Why is it that apologists for really bad movies always pull out the same tired cliche about ``intellectual stimulation?'' I may be pretty dense at times, but I assure you I wasn't thick enough to walk into MI2 expecting to see some sort of european art film or anything like that. Nevertheless, I don't think it is asking too much for the holes in the plot to be smaller than the helicopter our heroes were flying around in. I mean, the bad guy's master plan made no sense whatsoever, on any level (as if he's going to just walk in and take his seat on the board of directors after having released a super-flu on the world. Hello, McFly?). Add to that a love story between two characters that had no chemistry whatsoever, mix in some glaring continuity errors, add a dash of fight scenes that would make an anime director blush, stir, and simmer for two hours, and you have a recipe for a seriously mediocre film.
I'm not saying I hated it; it had its good points. Some of the stunts were cool, and the soundtrack was pretty good, but a film can get a hell of a lot better than this without venturing into ``deep flick'' territory. If you haven't seen it already, wait for it to come out in the $2 theatre.
-rpl
In regards to all of you who have said the fighting style used by Cruise in this movie is "bogus" or "unrealistic", need to try learning a little about the subject before you go blasting your mouths off. To quote a few: "...and Tom Cruise performing stupid backflip karate kicks that might work if they were in Cowboy BeBop, but don't even come close when actual human actors pretend to perform them in slow motion." "And don't even get me started about all the laws-of-physics-out-the-window stuff that happened during the fight scenes. It was all way too much like the Matrix, but wait! We aren't in a computer-generated world here! This is supposedly real!" "And I'm sorry, I don't think that doing flip-kicks are going to be that effective." Many/most of the moves used by cruise in this movie are from a brazilian martial art known as Capoeira, which I myself am a student of, and find it to be incredibly effective as a fighting style. Granted, the bad guy would never have been able to take the kind of punishment Cruise dished out, as several of the kicks used would cripple any normal human being, but the kicks themselves weren't unrealistic in any way whatsoever. Just thought I'd throw in my two cents.
I think the thing that started Gladiator off on the wrong foot for me was the fact that the Roman Legion was using Mongol recurve bows and 12th century ballistas in the 3rd century AD. This is roughly equivalent to Mel Gibson using a machinegun in Braveheart. Never mind that longbows (the first large European bows used heavily for combat) were invented by the Welsh a noticable while later. The Roman Legions used javelins. The javelins were made with soft metal heads that would bend if they hit a shield, so that the user was stuck with dead weight instead of a useful shield. The time and place references did not get better as the movie went on, either. The stirrup, allowing effective cavalry, also had not been invented.
As far as plot goes, it was at least as predictable as MI:2, if not more so. The only three-dimensional character in the film was the former gladiator who owned Maximus. All the rest of the characters were lucky to get one dimension. The plot was painful and the ending simply absurd. Which is more unlikely, Cruise's nutty aerobatic fighting style, or an EMPEROR challenging a SLAVE to a duel?!?!?
I'm sorry. If you want a brainless plot with some good action and entertainment, go see either. If you want a good plot, respectable dialogue, etc. don't see either. I am just astounded that Gladiator can be held up as a better movie than MI:2, when the first is a poor rehash of old gladiator movies and the second is an occaisionally inventive action flick in the spy motif. The only possible reasons I can come up with is that people have seen more spy movies recently, or that they just want to see people dismembered.
Argh. Anyway, if you like John Woo movies, as I do, you will be entertained by MI:2. If you are a medieval weaponry buff, as I am, you will like the fight scenes in Gladiator. If you like to laugh, as I do, you might just like Jackie Chan's mockery of the old west in Shanghai Noon better than either one. The script is witty and the action is good. Plus, it probably cost about a tenth of what either of the other two did.
B. Elgin
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
p.s. i;m a film editor, so i didn't just pull that COMPLETELY out of my ass (just mostly :)