Beauty and the Bug
FILM: Mission: Impossible-2
DIRECTOR: John Woo
STARRING: Tom Cruise, Thandie Newton
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ANOTHER FINE MESS: ETHAN HUNT (TOM CRUISE) FINDS HIMSELF CAUGHT BETWEEN A ROCK
AND THE BIG WIDE OPEN IN MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE-2.
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John Woo's Mission: Impossible-2 is a picture that should have listened
to its own advice. The flick opens with an ominous little speech by a
Russo-Germanic scientist type, sort of Einstein meets Werner Von Braun, to work
in the field of genetic engineering. Science Guy says every hero needs a worthy
villain to realize his heroic potential, or something to that effect. Fine.
He's talking about a super-duper viral killer he's cooked up, needing a Jupiter
flu bug to be worthy of its life-saving might. But Woo ought to have reflected
that the hero of his movie needed a worthy villain as well. The early Bondians
knew this. That's why they gave us Dr. No, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw and
hat-slinging Oddjob. So who does Tom Cruise get to accomplish the impossible
against? Yul Brenner playing a cowboy robot with an itchy trigger finger?
Ahnuld arriving from the fewcha to make sure the hero never escapes from the
gleam of his daddy's eye? Hannibal Lecter with an unquenched thirst for a
bottle of Chianti and a hankering for a serving of fava beans? No. Poor Tom has
to settle for a lovesick dweeb whose big villain skill -- get this -- is
impersonating Tom. What's the handsomest guy on Earth supposed to do with that?
Impersonate himself better than the other guy impersonates him?
Written by Robert Towne, whose Chinatown days lay in a
galaxy long, long ago, M: I-2 sends Ethan Hunt (Cruise) up against a
neurotic band of germ terrorists who off Einstein Von Braun (Rade Sherbedgia,
playing a character named Dr. Vladimir Nekhorvich) without even knowing what
they're stealing. Ethan is plucked off a mountain face where he's clinging by
the world's handsomest fingernails (cliffhanger, get it) and told he's got 48
hours to save the world from killer phlegm. And first, he's got to recruit a
jewel thief. Thank God for that. Because the jewel thief, Nyah Hall, is played
by Thandie Newton. And frankly, once she got into this picture, I began wishing
the movie theater came with a mute button so I could have pushed it, blocked
out all the clunky dialogue and ridiculous pyrotechnics and devoted all my
energy to worshiping every molecule in her gorgeous body. I've been in love
with this woman since she was a teenager in John Duigan's Flirting. She
normally devotes herself to quality material like Jonathan Demme's
Beloved or Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged, but I'm glad for the
chance to look at her even in popcorn fare like this.
Anyway, Ethan has to recruit Nyah because Nyah used to be engaged
to Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), the shape-shifting villain, and Sean hasn't
ever gotten over her, a state of mind with which I can fully identify. Ethan
charges Nyah with the task of joining up with Sean's gang and keeping Ethan
abreast of what evil Sean is up to. Nyah agrees to this assignment because,
after all, Ethan is the handsomest man on Earth. Oh yes, and I forgot to
mention, Ethan and Nyah are in love. We know this because they have sex and
then bite their lower lips when parting. I'd love the opportunity to bite my
lower lip in the presence of Thandie Newton, but I wouldn't want to practice
the foreplay technique employed here, which involves driving as fast as
possible in sports cars and trying to ram your potential lover off the side of
a twisting mountain road. My own style runs more to a nice dinner, a bottle of
Merlot and the Beatles' white album. I know, I'm showing my age.
Well, Nyah's over there, and Ethan's over here. So Ethan's got to
go over there and bring her back here. Lucky bastard. But no! Sean
discovers that Nyah loves Ethan and out of pure spite, he gives her the flu. Or
that's what would make better sense anyway. Actually, for reasons I couldn't
quite fathom, Nyah gives herself the flu. Still, what's important is that
Nyah's about to need a truckload of Kleenex, and that means Ethan has even more
reasons for taking the medicine away from Sean.
So it's time for the big showdown. The characters impersonate each
other and fool the other characters, which means the other characters are fools
because nobody fools us. Then, in a dramatic helicopter/car/motorcycle chase,
Ethan eliminates all of Sean's henchmen so he can go Harley-to-Harley with
Sean. Ready, set, smash. This ending is so patently ridiculous that it drew
unintended (I think) laughs from the audience with whom I saw the picture. The
big problem for me, though, is that I had to watch two stupid idiots slug each
other when I could have been somewhere else in the movie bringing Thandie
Newton a nice cup of hot tea and a cold compress for her feverish forehead.
There, there, I would have said. You don't need the handsomest guy on Earth. I
wouldn't let you catch so much as a three-day common cold.
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