MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2

****DISCLAIMER****These reviews are for entertainment purposes only. They do not reflect the opinions of my friends, my family, or my religion. They do however, reflect the amount of drugs and alcohol I've been taking as of late. Crack does a body good.

Before I went to the theater to see this movie over the weekend, a lot of my friends and some family members had seen it when it opened on its release date, which was a Wednesday. Here were some of the things they had to say....

"It was a love story with sprinkles of action thrown in."

"I fell asleep three times. Was John Woo the director, or was it John Wooshoo, and they just cut off the 'shoo' part of his last name?"

"It had too many slow parts."

"Too much of a love theme."

So having heard all of this from different sources, I was reluctant to go see it. However, all of these people that didn't enjoy it also think that Armageddon, The Rock, and Independence Day were "kick ass" movies so I wasn't going to listen to 'em anyway. I didn't like the first Mission Impossible when I originally saw it in the theaters, but when I saw it again years later on DVD I loved it. Will I have the same love for the sequel? Will the spawn of the first Mission be as warm and as tender to my beating black heart? Will it make me want to stand up and shout " Thank God I'm an American, because we know how to spy and take your country's women!" or will I simply sit in my seat shouting " What in the wild, wild world of sports is going on here?" Will I feel like I just spend my hard earned seven dollars wisely instead of buying that six pack? Will I have new found love for John Woo, the same man who made that horrible Broken Arrow movie? Will I ever get this f***ing review going?

Our ‘big bang’ movie of the week is Mission Impossible 2 (a.k.a. Tom Grew His Hair Longer So We Wouldn't Stare At His Big Nose So Much 2) starring Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, a member of the elite Mission team who sole purpose is to go and do things the government could not dare do, such as stealing stolen objects and claiming them as their own and killing foreign dignitaries. Wait....our government already does that, never mind. Tom's big mission in the movie is to recover a stolen virus that when injected into the body, causes a red blood cell breakdown after 20 hours, killing the person. Big deal. We've had that virus for decades. It's called McDonald's. Here to help out Mr. Cruise is Ving Rhames who has about an important a role as he did in the first movie, which was to sit in front of his computer (an Apple laptop of course. They have to make sure we see what brand it is) and say things like " They're on their way, Ethan." or " I've lost the satellite uplink." or " My big black hard drive has more RAM than your little white ass ever could have." I could have sworn he said that in the movie. The other member of the team was an Australian pilot. I guess that was his skill because he did absolutely nothing in this movie besides hold a pair of binoculars and scream things into Ethan's earpiece like " He's right behind you, mate." or " I got him, mate." or " Gimme a Fosters, you faggety European." I could have sworn that he said that in the movie. Since the first MI pretty much took that whole 'team' thing and threw it right out the window, destroying the coolness of the TV series and making it a pure Tom Cruise vehicle, it's nice to see that they've decided to stick to that formula and screw the whole team deal again. Bastards. I guess having a white guy, a black guy and an Australian is enough of a team to either take it to the hole in a game of 3 on 3, wrestle crocodiles, or bitch about your SUV not having the deluxe package as you run red lights.

So what about this whole 'love interest' thing? Was it as big of a deal as everyone made it out to be? Yes and no. Here's the thing. The virus was the main plot of the movie but if you split that plot in half then the other half would be the love interest which kind of compliments the main vein of the plot. Thandie Newton plays the hottie in this one as Nyah, a thief who has stolen Tom's heart from that bitch Nicole Kidman and is not gonna give it back. She has to go under cover and under the covers and get chummy chummy with her ex-boyfriend and main villain Sean played by Dougray Scott. Sean was an IMF member before getting this wild hair up his ass about viruses. In the first movie, the head honcho turns on the team and in this movie, it's one of the members. Are the medical benefits really that bad? The love portion of the movie was not that big of a deal and I kind of enjoyed it. They could have dragged it out (they really, really could have dragged it out since they cut 40+ minutes of the movie to fit it for two hours) but it was actually not as annoying as everyone made it out to be. The reason it didn't bore me was since they were throwing out this whole 'team' thing and thrusting Cruise as the frontrunner for every action piece, then I didn't see the problem with him being the main guy to get a piece of ass since he needed her help to begin with. I thought it actually helped out and distracted us from the weak ass mission. Plus she had a great body.

So why does it seem like I liked this movie? It's because I did. I thought it had action throughout its two hours, it had some spy elements, and it had Cruise doing his own stunts which was pretty cool, but I think a couple of those motorcycle scenes looked like stunt riders. The reason I enjoyed the movie was I wasn't bored. The action scenes were very nicely done and they pulled off a great motorcycle chase the way Ronin pulled off a great car chase. I saw some of the John Woo elements in the picture but not that many like from his Hong Kong films. Still, he was the main man for the job and pulled it off.

So don't worry about what your friends or family tell you about this sequel. I was entertained throughout the picture and I felt like I saw a good action movie that was entertaining and fun to watch. Fun for the spy elements, fun for the action, and fun for the Thandie Newton 'great ass' factor. I'm sure with wife Nicole being Far And Away, Tom was living up to his Legend when he whipped out his Top Gun, showed her All The Right Moves and was slapping those Days Of Thunder on her butt in his trailer. It's good to be king.

My rating:

--- Full Price

- Matinee

- Wait For Video

- Wait For Cable

- Wait For MI:3 The Quest For Rosie's Dietician (you didn't think I'd go a whole review without getting one Rosie joke in, did you?)