MISSION IMPOSSIBLE II is doubly disappointing: first as a sequel, then as a John Woo film. Despite some critical brickbats, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE was actually a decent spy thriller that played around with the IMF formula in interesting ways, while resorting to big action set pieces on only a few judicious occasions. Typical of sequels, MI2 amps up the action in an effort to top its predecessor but only ends up falling all over itself. Sadly, Woo's directorial stylings only exacerbate the problem, pumping up the proceedings with over-the-top action that reminds us how ridiculous the whole film is.

The opening sequence launches on our path to disappointment almost immediately, promising some exciting action aboard a plane but then dwindling away to an anti-climax. This leads to the opening credits, under which we see Tom Cruise rock climbing. The eye-popping footage makes your head swim even if you don't have a fear of heights, but the sequence is unrelated to anything else in the movie—except in the sense that little in the movie relates to anything else in the movie, so this is just par for the course.

After the credits, instead of jumping into the search for the “Chimera” virus (stolen in the opening plane sequence), the film immediately bogs down in a romantic subplot that has features Ethan Hunt (Cruise) recruiting Nyah (Thandie Newton) as a new member of the team. Of course, he falls for her, so by the time he has her ready to do the job (which involves, literally, sleeping with the enemy) he no longer wants her to do it.

We're supposed to feel some kind of emotional response to this predicament, but we don't. Rather than a complication, it's a distraction from the meat of the film, because it's just too contrived to register credibly. John Woo’s best films ground their action in stories about the bonds of honor and/or rivalry between men (<I>Hardboiled, Face/Off</I>). He fumbles the romantic relationship because it doesn't play into his usual macho ethos. Consequently, there are twenty minutes of wasted screen time before the real plot kicks in, boring us with an uninteresting moral dilemma; instead of delivering the promised action escapades.

Unfortunately, the film never recovers. The remainder of the story is a jumble of spy clichés and abandoned romantic subplots, punctuated with regularly timed doses of fighting, chasing, etc. It turns out that the virus was stolen by one of Hunt’s counterparts on the IM force, Ambrose (played by Dougray Scott). Curiously, although the plane was obliterated in an explosive crash, Hunt’s boss (Anthony Hopkins) not only know that Ambrose is alive (guess he had the IMF's CSI team do a Humpty-Dumpty job piecing body parts back together) but also know that he was the one responsible for the heist! (Left unanswered is the question: why did IMF assign such a suspicious character to the mission in the first place?)

Of course, the rogue agent plot is contrived to provide at least one characteristic John Woo characteristic: the Doppelganger. Woo likes to play around with having his villains and heroes look and/or act like mirror images of each other. In this case, Scott is disguised as Cruise at least twice. With the false face (and voice simulator taped to the neck), MI2 starts to feel like a reworking of <I>Face/Off</I> except that in the earlier film, the antagonism between the two leads formed the core of the story. Here, we are told that the characters know of each other, but this fails to generate a truly dramatic conflict, because their interaction is so minimal.

While we're on the subject of disguises, MI2 is far too enamored with repetitive “revelation scenes," wherein a mask is ripped off to reveal the true face underneath. The image is repeated perhaps a half dozen times, long after the surprise has worn off; in fact, the audience comes to anticipate the revelation. Ultimately, the effect becomes ridiculous, because Hunt seems to have an unlimited supply of masks and voice simulators, which he can apply instantaneously at any time and under any circumstances, in one case even disguising a (presumably uncooperative) villain to look like him. It certainly wouldn't hurt to have scene that mask <I>applied</I> at least once, just to clarify just how Hunt manages to do the trick so quickly, time and again.

Anyway, Hunt discovers the truth about the virus and tries to destroy it, but Ambrose wants to unleash it and then make lots of money with a cure. After a few plot complications, Nyah becomes infected, and a Scott realizes she’s been playing him for a sucker, then decides to get his revenge by using her as a “Typhoid Mary” to spread the disease.

This opens a gaping plot how: we are told the Chimera virus is lethal, but we never learn how it spreads. Is it airborne, or does it require actual physical contact, maybe even an exchange of bodily fluids? The question looms large when the villains leave Nyah in the middle of Sidney, Australia, hoping she will spreading the disease. She manages to leave town and reach a seaside cliff (where she plans to commit suicide) without infecting a single person. So much for that nefarious plot – foiled by the simple expedient of walking to the ocean! Hunt’s IM colleagues seem to know that close proximity is not dangerous (they don't mind being enclosed in a helicopter with the infected woman), so we have to wonder why Ambrose was ignorant about the disease's relative incommunicability.

This is especially true because the conscious-stricken scientist, who smuggled the allegedly lethal virus out of the lab, was not the least bit worried about infecting other passengers on an airplane, and Ambrose never contracts the disease – despite sitting right next to him! That he remained alive past the incubation period should have clued this villainous mastermind to the fact that Chimera is not particularly contagious.

Normally, it might be silly to point out credibility lapses in a summer action flick, but the film warrants this kind of scrutiny because its script demands to be taken seriously as something more than just a popcorn movie. It’s filled with character development scenes that are supposed to make us care about these people and feel we’re watching a movie with more depth than the first MISSION IMPOSSIBLE film, directed by Brian DePalma in 1996.

The end result, however, is noticeably inferior to that underrated effort. At least DePalma’s patented visual style generated suspense, making MISSION IMPOSSIBLE come across like a decent “spy who came in from the cold” type thriller, merely punctuated by a couple of great set pieces. Woo can thrill with excitement, but he can’t make you bite your nails in anticipation. So we end up just waiting for the great images shown in the trailer, and when the finally arrive, they provide a few moments of entertainment value, but it’s too little, too late.

Essentially, the plan of everyone involved seems to have been to dump the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE formula in favor of making a hyped-up version of a James Bond film. There really is no IM team. Ving Rhames may be back, and there’s there's an Australian helicopter pilot (whose contribution does not extend much further than that), but that's about it. Presumably, producer Tom Cruise was not going to hire an ensemble that might have marginalized actor Tom Cruise's star turn.

Only one sequence echoes the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE premise, which usually featured the IM force using stealth and subterfuge to fool their opponents into destroying themselves. Midway through, Ethan Hunt and cohorts kidnap a villain and convince him that he has contracted the virus. In the classic fashion, this ruse coaxes the dupe into revealing necessary information that the IMF will use to defeat the bad guys.

Woo, a talented action helmer, plays right into this failed gambit. He stages numerous fights, shoot-outs, and chase scenes, but they feel gratuitously grafted onto Robert Towne's screenplay (this ain't Chinatown, Jake). As a result, the plot stumbles along without conviction or interest, and when the action erupts, your senses have almost been dulled past the point of enjoying it.