Mission: Impossible II

Recommendation

This is another one that I don’t think I recommend to people who aren’t looking to binge the series. It’s not a bad film, it’s fine, but it’s also not special. Like the first film, I can suggest a watch for context, since this movie builds out the characters and the IMF a bit more.

I also can fully recommend skipping this movie. My recommendation for the first movie also applies to this one: if you’re looking for a spy movie or even specifically a Mission: Impossible movie, there are better options available to you in the series (Mission: Impossible III or better yet Mission: Impossible - Fallout).

Thoughts

The Unbeatable Action Hero

Ethan Hunt in this movie is basically invincible which has a negative effect on the stakes of the story. Of course, watching the film now we know that his character isn’t going to die because he has to star in the next several films, but in this film Ethan doesn’t even seem capable of losing a fight.

This issue occurred to me during the scene where Ethan infiltrates the biomedical company to destroy the virus. Their barely planned scheme goes off without much of a hitch until the bad guy shows up to intervene. Even then, it doesn’t play out as the bad guy planning well, because Ethan has already successfully destroyed the main virus and all but one of the inoculation guns.

This lowering of the stakes and implication that everything will end with Ethan saving the day removes all of the suspense from the plot. In all of the other movies, including the first, Ethan is barely escaping with his life and scrapes out a win from the jaws of defeat. In MI: 2, the only tension is if they will save his girlfriend or not, but the fate of the world never really feels like it’s in the balance.

Bad Guy in the IMF

One through line for all of the Mission: Impossible movies is that they love a bad guy working in the IMF. Minor Spoilers, but I think Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol is the only movie where the big bad isn’t either from IMF or some equivalent allied spy agency.

This movie is no exception, although I think it does a better job of using that plot point than many of the others. Normally, Ethan is framed by a corrupt senior agent, but in this movie, he goes head to head with another IMF agent at the same level as him. This makes for some interesting and fun scenes like when Ambrose (the bad guy) uses the mask tech to impersonate Ethan, or when he use’s his insider knowledge of Ethan’s tactics to predict how he will infiltrate the biomedical facility to destroy the virus.