From The New Yorker
It should have been a treat. The director is John Woo, the man who took the gravity out of gunfights. The screenwriter is Robert Towne, who wrote half of the movies that made Jack Nicholson a star, and the leading lady is Thandie Newton, whose face could make a thousand ships do pretty much anything she wants. But this much-vaunted sequel to "Mission: Impossible," which hops from Australia to Spain and back again, is neither happy nor hip. It goes through the motions of the multinational action thriller, and, although those motions are as flamboyantly excessive as you would expect, the result is more gruelling than pleasurable. If the new flick has a core, it is Tom Cruise, who reprises his role as the leader of a team of spies. The sense of teamwork, however, has dropped away, and the plot-indeed, the whole movie-becomes an homage to the grim cockiness of Cruise, and, in particular, to his indestructible physique. The first film was merely incomprehensible; this one is unnecessary. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker