I saw MI:2 the other night.
I expended all my outrage about the desecration of the TV show when the de Palma movie showed up. When it turned out that the original team had, in fact, been killed, rather than pseudo-killed in an all-knowing plot to get Henry Czerny, I walked out. That they would so egregiously fuck with the central premise of the TV show--that nothing ever went wrong--is still a sore point with me, and I'm not even a devout fan of the series. I played video games and I came back in for the silent scenes and the helicopter/tunnel bout. This remains one of the few times I have ever walked out of a movie.
But when MI:2 came out, I knew what to expect--it wasn't going to be respectful of the series, but instead A Tom Cruise Action Picture. I had decent expectations--it was a Woo film, after all.
If you go in with the proper mindset, it's not a violation of the original series, but a barely adequate action film.
The villain was tedious and unattractive. Cruise's MI "team" was given nothing to do--what a waste of Ving Rhames. (Of course, it's not really a team, it's a support staff.) Thandie Newton ranks high on my slap list and did nothing to cause me to reconsider. It's too bad, really, because her role was a few steps above the usual Chick in Action Film standard, and a decent actress might have had some fun with it. And I don't know when action films abandoned humor as a fundamental element, but I miss it.
I liked a few moments well enough--while the plot was certainly simple, it had a few nice twists that were predictable in a good way. ("Now, if they had any sense of originality at all, they'd do....oh, they did.")
And that Cruise, he is a pretty lad.
Nothing to get worked up about, nothing particularly interesting, but it's only offensively awful if you consider its pedigree.
