4/5 Good intense action
  by Galo A. Chao
I love action movies and this is one that doesn't let you blink. Very good movie.

3/5 A good romantic action-adventure movie...
  by Roberto Frangie (Leon, Gto. Mexico)
In writing a story to fit the action in "Mission: Impossible 2", Screenwriter Robert Towne brought nuance, complexity and irony to the human interaction and to the characters... So greed is the animating force...

Being an amazing filmmaker, John Woo wanted "Mission Impossible 2" to have a lot more emotion and romance... A romantic interest that can engage the hero emotionally, pushing him to exercise his skills... In this case, he's trying to save the life of someone he cares for and loves...The story revolves around three characters... The good guy and the bad guy in love with the same girl...

John Woo's sequences were highly developed, completely mind-blowing, dangerous and exciting... Woo really pushed his elements to the edge, designing action that people have never seen...

Tom Cruise and Thandie Newton looked very charming, proving to have a great chemistry with each other... They also looked very natural... I loved the scene when they meet, and how they meet... The opening scene came from Robert Wise's "West Side Story"... It is boy meets girl, girl looks at boy... No story telling was needed... With high speed and the judicious muting of sound, Woo made it a love-at-first-sight moment, isolating our two heroes in a very lovely way...

Tom's character was a new kind of a hero... A person who really cares about people, and enjoys life... He has a great passion about nature, about love, about everything...

Thandie's romantic life was very busy... She is involved with the character played by Dougray Scott, Ambrose who's the key for the Mission team... He is the one with the information which Thandie's character has to win back... Dougray was a really interesting bad guy, as complex a bad guy as you can get and with an impossible mission...

Dougray's Ambrose becomes disillusioned with being in Ethan's shadow... In deciding to have more power, he turns to the other side... He forms a renegade band of ex-Special Forces people... But Ambrose couldn't even be himself... He includes his identity into Hunt's, when Ethan was not available... So if he needed to be something, he had to be Ethan Hunt...

Ving Rhames' Luther was a balance in the team... He's a computer expert who brought the charm to his character... Outside of Ethan Hunt, he is the only returning member of the IMF team...

"Mission: Impossible 2" gave John Woo the ability to really use his filming style, which is the slow motion on key moments... You can see Cruise slow-motion flipping through the air, walking through flames with a white dove sending a message to the evil, running and jumping out of a hole, climbing dangerous scary high cliff, jousting on a motorcycle, trapped in a gun battle, Kick boxing, and having a really sharp and pointy knife in the eye...

5/5 Mission Impossible II
  by Collie (Wyoming,USA)
Arrived in perfect condtition,& in plenty of time for Santa to put this DVD in a stocking. Since this was a gift I haven't viewed it - but daughter & husband said it was very good.

4/5 Tom and John Get It On (does that sound wrong?)
  by G. YEO (Singapore)
I just got this disc after watching it years ago in its worldwide premiere. I wanted to see what I liked about it and the film holds up remarkably well.

MI-2 features the creative and extravagant pairing of Tom Cruise and John Woo (more explosions! more cars!). Their signature presence is evident in every shot. Robert Towne's script, though no doubt rewritten, is actually tight with strong dialogue and a solid plot. In short, the film works well on all fronts. It doesn't force viewers to think or understand what the problem is - it just gets on with it, unlike many movies that try too hard to be cerebral and clever. People clamouring for the original Brian DePalma Mission Impossible film (which I found convoluted) will never like the subsequent MI-2 and 3 efforts which veered more into James Bond action popcorn territory.

Considering Woo's mixed experiences in Hollywood, MI-2 is actually one of his most polished efforts. In spite of a couple of schticky moments which many people find justifiably hokey (I just had to watch the Audi-Porsche car spinning sequence again) - the film doesn't try to take itself too seriously WHICH IS THE POINT. Critics of Tom Cruise and John Woo will never fully enjoy the film, because of Cruise's cheeseball grin, and Woo's stylistic quirks. But put away those issues, and excuse the signature doves flying around, and you have a thrill-a-minute film.

The casting of Thandie Newton and Dougray Scott makes the film even more intriguing, and puts MI-2 above many other films of this genre that almost reach for this but never make it. As an action film, this has some amazing shots that deserve kudos.

The DVD extras are extensive and a good primer for anyone interested in how to do an action film. There are good interviews with the director and stunt supervisors. There's also a hilarious mockumentary with Ben Stiller from the MTV Movie Awards spoofing Tom Cruise as "Tom Crooze."

MI-2 is underrated. Watch it and enjoy it. If you need a heavy down-to-earth thriller - heck, Mission Impossible was never about that if you recall the premise of "this message will self-destruct in 5 seconds..." It's meant to be fun.


4/5 A letdown after the hype
  by Mitch Clifford (New York)
Let me say, the trailer was good. Wetted my appetite for the real deal... Sorry to say that the film was cliche, the fight scenes could have been improved (should have hired Woo Ping Yuen as the martial arts director), the editing was not sharp enough to backup the action. Some of the scenes like on the bike was so unrealistic that the Hong Kong audience found it unrealistic (after being brought up on unrealistic martial arts film in HK, I would have thought we could have accepted this)... The MI team is supposed to be a hi-tech team with lots of gadgetry like in MI part 1, but in MI2, we don't see much of this. This is another run of the mill action film. John Woo's direction was disappointing, laboured over some of his trademarks such as the slow motion cam, plus the doves. The damn dove and the damn pigeons! There are some good new tricks (like shooting backwards on the bike by looking at the rear view mirror), but the emphasis was not there. It didn't look as cool as it should have. I can't put my finger on the thing that ruined the film... but it definitely could have been much much better. Gladiator is a better bet for the summer's action...