I Watch Films: Mission: Impossible 2

 

Mission: Impossible 2

In Sydney, Australia a bio-geneticist asks for Dimitri to escort him to Atlanta, Georgia and the CDC there. Dimitri, it turns out, is an alias for Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) from the Mission: Impossible films. But in another twist, this Dimitri is actually IMF agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) in both a rubber mask and with a voice patch impersonating Hunt and/or Dimitri. He sleeping gases the plane, steals the stuff the bio-geneticist stole from the laboratory he works at, and then he and his colleagues jump out the plane leaving it to crash in the Rockies.

The real Ethan Hunt, in Seville, Spain, is informed of this and more; the laboratory Biocyte has created a cure for bio-weapons called Bellerophon, but to do so they had to create a virulent, ever-changing bio-weapon called Chimera. He’s told to pick a team to recover both Chimera and Bellerophon, or if not that to destroy them, and has him recruit professional thief and Ambrose’s ex-girlfriend Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandiwe Newton) in the middle of a heist. He injects her with a tracker and then has Ambrose made aware that she’s been arrested and is looking for him. Ambrose contacts her, brings her to his safe house in Sydney.

After some spy stuff the situation is revealed. Ambrose has Bellerophon, valuable, and also video of Chimera infecting someone, which he uses to blackmail the Biocyte CEO Mcloy. He doesn’t have Chimera (the bio-geneticist had injected himself with it; it has a 20 hour incubation period during which he could use Bellerophon to cure himself). Ethan’s team kidnap Mcloy and learn that there are only two samples of Chimera in the impregnable vault in Biocyte HQ, and Ambrose has the only Bellerophon.

Ethan breaks into the impregnable vault, only to be ambushed by Ambrose and his team. Things go wrong to the extent that Nyah injects herself with the last sample of Chimera, and asks Ethan to kill her, but he doesn’t and escapes. When Ambrose tries to complete the deal with Mcloy, Ethan is there and a complex and violent final sequence ensues.

This introduces the voice changer to go with the rubber masks, completing the perfect disguise for the rest of the series, and used to either good effect or else very annoying effect here. The heist, the double-cross, the chases, these are cemented in to the series. Directed by John Woo, the slow motion and high energy fights don’t seem to stick around, or at least not his distinctive styles. In any case, despite it’s flaws this is the film that tells us what the Mission: Impossible series is about. Rogue agents, world-ending dangers, fake set-ups, reveals, breaking into impregnable places and silly rescues.

Watch This: High powered thriller with plenty of enjoyable action
Don’t Watch This: Very silly, contrived and occasionally stylised