Mission Impossible II

''Mission: Impossible 2'' (titled onscreen as ''Mission: Impossible II'' and abbreviated as ''M:i-2'') is a 2000 action spy film directed by John Woo, and produced by and starring Tom Cruise. It is a standalone sequel to '' Mission: Impossible'' (1996) and the second installment in the ''Mission: Impossible'' film series. The film also stars Dougray Scott, Thandiwe Newton, Richard Roxburgh, John Polson, Brendan Gleeson, Rade Šerbedžija and Ving Rhames. In the film, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) teams with professional thief Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Newton) to secure a genetically modified disease, Chimera, held by rogue Impossible Missions Force (IMF) agent Sean Ambrose (Scott), who is Nordoff-Hall's former lover.

''Mission: Impossible 2'' was theatrically released in the United States by Paramount Pictures on May 24, 2000, and grossed over $546 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of that year. It received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for the action sequences and Woo's direction, but criticism for the characterization. A third film, '' Mission: Impossible III'', was released in 2006.

Plot

In Sydney, bio-genetics scientist Doctor Vladimir Nekhorvich sends a message to the IMF for Dimitri (Ethan Hunt's cover name), his old friend, warning that his employer, Biocyte Pharmaceuticals, forced him to develop a biological weapon, the Chimera virus, to profit from the cure, Bellerophon. He injects himself with the virus, carrying Bellerophon in a bag. However, en route to Atlanta, IMF agent Sean Ambrose, who was disguised as Dimitri, goes rogue, betrays Nekhorvich, using sleeping gas on everyone aboard, steals Bellerophon, and jumps out of the plane before it crashes into the Rockies.

In Seville, IMF director Swanbeck informs Ethan about Ambrose's actions, tasks him with recovering Chimera and Bellerophon, and has him recruit Nyah Nordoff-Hall, a professional thief and Ambrose's ex-girlfriend. Despite her initial reluctance, Ethan gets her to trace Ambrose to Sydney using an injectable tracking device. Ethan assembles his team, old friend and computer hacker Luther Stickell, and helicopter pilot Billy Baird in Sydney while Nyah pretends to rekindle her relationship with Ambrose.

After Ambrose uses a video of Chimera infecting one of Nekhorvich's colleagues to blackmail Biocyte's CEO, John McCloy, into cooperation, Nyah gives Ethan the memory card containing the video, revealing that Chimera has a 20-hour dormant period; Bellerophon is only effective if used within that window. Ethan's team kidnaps McCloy and learns that the only Bellerophon samples, taken by Nekhorvich, are now in Ambrose's hands, but he doesn't have the virus since Nekhorvich injected himself with it. Ethan breaks into Biocyte headquarters and destroys two samples of Chimera, but Ambrose's team ambushes him, having discovered Nyah's deception. At a stalemate, Ambrose orders Nyah to retrieve the virus' last sample, but she injects herself with it instead and begs Ethan to kill her to destroy the virus. Ethan refuses and flees the facility, promising to get her the cure.

Ambrose releases Nyah to wander the streets of Sydney, intending to start a pandemic. At Biocyte's storage facility on Bare Island, he offers to sell Bellerophon to McCloy in exchange for enough stock options to make him Biocyte's majority shareholder, enabling him and McCloy to make billions. Ethan infiltrates the base and fights Ambrose's right-hand man, Hugh Stamp; Stamp seemingly brings a subdued Ethan to Ambrose, who executes him. However, Ambrose, upon seeing Stamp's bandaged finger (which he had earlier cut with a cigar cutter for questioning his trust in Nyah), discovers that the dead "Ethan" is Stamp, masked and gagged, while the actual Ethan has stolen the Bellerophon samples. Enraged, Ambrose and his men chase Ethan onto the mainland; Hunt kills them, while Luther and Billy locate Nyah, who has wandered to a cliffside to kill herself and prevent the outbreak.

Ethan kills Ambrose in an extended fistfight on the beach and gives Bellerophon to the arriving Luther, who injects Nyah with it. In return for her cooperation, the IMF clears Nyah's criminal record, and Ethan starts a vacation with her in Sydney.

Cast

* Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt: An agent of the Impossible Missions Force (IMF).
* Dougray Scott as Sean Ambrose: A rogue IMF agent who possesses Bellerophon.
* Thandiwe Newton as Nyah Nordoff-Hall: A professional thief brought on to assist Ethan in tracing Ambrose.
* Richard Roxburgh as Hugh Stamp: Ambrose's right-hand man.
* John Polson as Billy Baird: A helicopter pilot.
* Brendan Gleeson as John C. McCloy: CEO of Biocyte in Australia.
* Rade Šerbedžija as Dr. Vladimir Nekhorvich: Creator of Chimera at Biocyte.

* Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell: A computer hacker and IMF agent.

Additionally, Anthony Hopkins appears in an uncredited cameo appearance as Mission Commander Swanbeck. Tom Cruise's cousin William Mapother and Dominic Purcell appear as, respectively, Wallis and Ulrich, two of Ambrose's henchmen.

Production

William Goldman says he was the first writer on the film. "All that's left of mine is the climax... the climbing up the rocks sequence," he said. "I couldn't come up with a good villain and Bob Towne did."

According to screenwriter Robert Towne, several action sequences were already planned for the film prior to his involvement and before the story had been written. Ian McKellen was offered the part of Mission Commander Swanbeck, but turned it down.

Cruise regretted killing off Jack Harmon in the previous film and attempted to include the character in the sequel. This idea was abandoned as Cruise and John Woo couldn't come up with a plausible way for Harmon to have survived his death in the previous film.

Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga's draft of the script included Willy Armitage as one of the team members, though the role would have been recast with a younger actor instead of original cast member Peter Lupus.

The studio expressed concern about the safety of filming Tom Cruise's entrance scene, in which he is free solo climbing at Dead Horse Point State Park in Moab, Utah. Cruise refused to drop the idea because he could not think of a better way to reintroduce the character. There was no safety net as he filmed the sequence, but he did have a harness and a thin wire. He tore his shoulder when performing the jump from one part of the cliff to another.

Thandiwe Newton discussed her unpleasant on-set experiences with Cruise during the shooting of the balcony sequence in a 2020 interview. According to Newton, Cruise was heavily stressed over the expectations of the sequel being good and was upset during the shooting of said scene because she had "the shittiest lines." The two decided to reverse roleplay each other as practice. However, it was unhelpful for her and pushed her "into a place of terror and insecurity." After the shooting was finished for the day, she contacted Jonathan Demme, telling him what happened. Looking back on that day, Newton said about Cruise, "Bless him. And I really do mean bless him because he was trying his damnedest".

During the final fight scene between Ethan Hunt and Sean Ambrose, Tom Cruise insisted that a real knife be used. The knife was attached to a cable and was carefully measured to stop a quarter of an inch from Tom Cruise's eyeball, and the actor asked Dougray Scott to put his full strength down on the knife to get a realistic look for the scene.

Music

The film's original score was composed by Hans Zimmer and features vocals performed by Lisa Gerrard. In addition, the film includes contemporary music such as Limp Bizkit's rendition of Lalo Schifrin's ''Mission: Impossible'' theme entitled " Take a Look Around" as well as Metallica's "I Disappear".

While Ethan is rock climbing during his holiday, Zap Mama's remixed version of "Iko Iko" plays on the soundtrack.

About the score, Zimmer said: "The love theme from ''Mission: Impossible'' Iwas written about 6 weeks before they started shooting. I was on it that early. Then, we had a big meeting in Australia. They had the love theme, and I knew what the story was about, and I always thought it was about these two men being in love with the girl. So I said to the record company guy, "Look, here's one thing I would love you to do, when you find bands for me, make them all female. Make them all about sirens." Of course, what did I get? A bunch of heavy metal bands with guys. I promise you, it would have been a better movie, and it would have been a better score."

In 2024, Diego Pineda Pacheco from Collider singled out ''Mission: Impossible 2'' as one of Zimmer's most underrated scores especially for the ''Injection'' scene: "The film's score is imbued with Spanish influences, filling the romance at the core of the narrative with passion and flair."

Release

Home media

''Mission: Impossible 2'' was released on VHS and DVD on November 7, 2000, with a rare Japanese LaserDisc release following on April 3, 2001 (released late in the format's life), with a potential North American release of this LaserDisc being cancelled in mid-2001. A Blu-ray release followed on June 3, 2008, and an Ultra HD Blu-ray version was released on June 26, 2018.

Reception

Box office

On opening day, ''Mission: Impossible 2'' made $12.5 million, making it the fourth-highest-grossing Wednesday opening, behind ''Men in Black'', ''Independence Day'' and ''Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace''. At that time, it had the largest number of screenings, playing at 3,653 theaters and beating ''Scream 3''. The film would go on to hold this record until it was surpassed by ''Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'' the following year. It grossed $57,845,297, crossing over ''Toy Story 2'' to have the third-highest-grossing opening weekend of all time, behind '' The Lost World: Jurassic Park'' and ''The Phantom Menace''. Moreover, the film surpassed its predecessor '' Mission: Impossible'' for not only having the highest-grossing opening weekend for a film based on a TV show, but also the largest opening weekend for any Paramount film. It also dethroned '' Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me'' for scoring the biggest opening weekend for a spy film, a position it held until 2002. The TV show opening weekend record would be held for seven years until ''The Simpsons Movie'' was released in 2007.

When ''Mission: Impossible 2'' first opened, the film was ranked number one at the US box office, topping out ''Dinosaur'' and ''Shanghai Noon''. In its second weekend, it collected a total of $27 million, while outgrossing ''Big Momma's House''. It held on to the number one spot for a total of two weekends until it was overtaken by '' Gone in 60 Seconds''. Around this time, the film went on to become the highest-grossing film of the year in the US, beating ''Gladiator''. It would remain so until that December when it was dethroned by ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas''.

It started its international release on June 1, 2000 and topped the Australian box office with a gross of $3.7 million (A$6.4 million) in its opening 4-day weekend from 366 screens, a record for United International Pictures. It was a big success in Japan, recording the second biggest opening ever behind ''Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace'' with a gross of $13.6 million from 356 screens, grossing over $50 million in just over three weeks and $94 million in total. The film also delivered the third-highest opening in Spain with $2.9 million, after the latter film and ''The Sixth Sense''. It recorded the biggest July opening in Germany with a four-day gross of $7.9 million and had record openings in Austria ($1.3 million) and Russia ($0.3 million).

The film eventually grossed $215,409,889 in the United States and Canada and $330,978,216 in other territories for a total worldwide gross of $546,388,105, making it the highest-grossing film of 2000. It is John Woo's highest-grossing film, surpassing ''Face/Off'', and was the highest-grossing film in the ''Mission: Impossible'' series until the release of the fourth film, '' Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol'', in 2011.

Critical response

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes indicates ''Mission: Impossible 2'' has an overall approval rating of 57% based on 209 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Your cranium may crave more substance, but your eyes will feast on the amazing action sequences." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 59 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, down from the first film's "B+".

Roger Ebert of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' awarded the film three out of four stars, stating "if the first movie was entertaining as sound, fury, and movement, this one is more evolved, more confident, more sure-footed in the way it marries minimal character development to seamless action." Owen Gleiberman of ''Entertainment Weekly'' felt the film was a "throwaway pleasure" but also "a triumph of souped-up action." Ella Taylor of ''LA Weekly'' said that "every car chase, every plane crash, every potential drop off a cliff is a masterpiece of grace and surprise." Desson Howe of ''The Washington Post'' said that " ohnWoo ..takes complete command of the latest technology to create brilliant action sequences."

J. Hoberman of ''The Village Voice'' called the film "a vaguely absurd thriller filled with elaborately superfluous setups and shamelessly stale James Bond riffs." Dennis Harvey of ''Variety'' said the film is "even more empty a luxury vehicle than its predecessor" and that it "pushes the envelope in terms of just how much flashy packaging an audience will buy when there's absolutely nada inside." Jonathan Rosenbaum of the ''Chicago Reader'' said that "no hero or villain winds up carrying any moral weight at all."

In a retrospective commentary in 2012, Brad Brevet noted the film has significant similarities in plot and themes to Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 film '' Notorious''.

Accolades

''Mission: Impossible 2'' won both Best Male Performance for Tom Cruise and Best Action Sequence at the MTV Movie Awards. However, it was also nominated for two Golden Raspberry Awards at the 2000 ceremony, including Worst Remake or Sequel and Worst Supporting Actress for Thandiwe Newton as well as nominated for a Stinker Award at the 2000 ceremony for Worst Song (Limp Bizkit's "Take a Look Around").

Sequel

Notes

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mission: Impossible 2
Mission: Impossible (film series)
2000 films
2000 action thriller films
2000s spy action films
2000s American films
2000s English-language films
English-language German films
American sequel films
American spy action films
American action adventure films
American action thriller films
English-language action adventure films
English-language action thriller films
2000s German films
German sequel films
German spy action films
German action adventure films
German action thriller films
Films about bioterrorism
Weapons of mass destruction in fiction
Films about computer hacking
Films based on television series
Films set on airplanes
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Films set in Colorado
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Films directed by John Woo
Films with screenplays by Brannon Braga
Films with screenplays by Ronald D. Moore
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Films scored by Hans Zimmer
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Films produced by Tom Cruise
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