SPOILERS DOWN THE PATH; THE DISCUSSION BELOW WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE WITHOUT IT.
TREAD CAREFULLY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
John Woo certainly wasn't the right director to helm a Mission: Impossible film. His direction has undoubtedly underwhelmed a sequel that had so much potential and mileage riding on it.
Let's flush the positives out of the way first. Noticeably, screenwriter Robert Towne has got a pretty good handle on the concept of deadlines to juice up the engine for tensions and thrills. Memory card information transfer sequence is a good example. Interplay of revelations using a fake Ethan Hunt visage was also well done. Mission: Impossible is known for its spy tech, and the laser glass cutter earned the limelight here. Hans Zimmer's score was great for the most parts, but certain dramatic type music were seriously out of place as far as the genre's concerned!
Slow motion effects and edits made M:I-2 look cheap before proceeding to drain the energy and life out of the movie as the runtime progressed forward. We understood the director's intention of projecting this motion picture as a larger than life product. In respect to that, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) throwing spectacles off as it bursts into flame was an awesome watch. But him climbing on a rock terrain with minimal protection on his side and obvious green screen in the background was honestly pushing it too far. However again, it was stylish and undeniably cool to watch.
After the introduction, pretty much everything went downhill. Actress Thandie Newton was brought in as Hunt's love interest; Nyah, and this was done to establish an important stake for our hero. Their chemistry wasn't working, romance blossomed too quickly, the actress couldn't command the role and their sexualized romance was draggy to say the least! Even the plot goal got delayed in attempt to set up something we need to care for! Nevertheless, we still felt the tightness and dilemma of the situation to a certain extent when Nyah's stuck with the antagonist.
Speaking of the antagonist, Dougray Scott's performance was sophomoric. The plot can get ridiculous at times, with fake newspaper printout to psychologically weaken a human subject, foolishly escaped necklace robbery and a laboriously tiresome Third Act being instances. A stalwart like Anthony Hopkins was hired to play a role but was never utilized to the fullest. Unorderly camera navigations and change of lens type at times were messy too.