Opens May 24, 2000

When George Bernard Shaw wrote "Man and Superman", he might well have been referencing all the rest of us men and women in the former, and, embodied in the latter, Tom Cruise. That is, the Tom Cruise who parades across the screen, muscles rippling, in Mission: Impossible 2. Gone is the naturally charismatic actor we're used to, a guy whose smile alone could seduce an audience. He has been replaced by Tom Cruise the uber-icon (the one from Days of Thunder and Cocktail), who literally prances about straining to be cool.

Cool is the operative word in this sorry follow-up to the first film, which itself had plenty of problems. As directed by John Woo, the often brilliant Chinese director whose kinetic style has galvanized the film industry, M:I 2 is an overwrought mess of awkwardly choreographed, often Matrix-esque action scenes designed to show Cruise off to the greatest advantage - so much so that his pyrotechnic skills start to seem ridiculous. After all, how many times can you watch the hero cartwheel kick the bad guy?

Too much cool means too little soul. Woo's Chinese films, like A Better Tomorrow and The Killer, married exquisite imagery, complex characters and pulse-pounding action. M: I 2 struggles to balance a tired action angle with a tenuous love story between Cruise's Ethan Hunt and sexy Aussie thief Naya (Thandie Newton). Robert Towne's script simply never manages to get the story off the ground, setting up a predictable triangle between Hunt, Naya and rogue agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), who just happens to be Naya's ex.

It's clear where this contrivance will lead: Duty calls and Hunt is forced to use Naya to get to Ambrose, who has stolen a top-secret chemical agent called Chimera and plans, of course, to ransom it for a hefty sum. Plot aside, the love triangle could have offered a rather intriguing life-death conflict forcing the hero to choose between two disparate loyalties -- duty or Naya. While both Towne and Cruise hit a few of the emotional beats, the more complex brush strokes are largely ignored - especially in the second half of the film when Woo suddenly seems to realize that he needs some action to liven things up. The result is a parody of his now-classic style.

So, what's there to like in this -- let's just say it -- vanity project? Well, Cruise does have some charming moments -- and why not, he is Tom Cruise. Likewise, there are the standard, enjoyable gizmo sequences, while the biotech stuff provides an edgy, albeit familiar, arena to play in. But still, this doesn't really feel like a Mission: Impossible movie. It's not really about the mission; Hunt's team consists only of familiar face/fashion plate Luther (Ving Rhames) and a generally useless chopper pilot. So much for teamwork. And, while it espouses to be about the characters, it's hard to get into the hero's head when so much time is spent on his athletic prowess -- perilous free climbing, black ops wire work and parachuting, an endless motorcycle chase and kung-fu -- after which he walks away from it all with a well-placed scratch on the face.

Yes, apparently Ethan Hunt is Superman. Hell, he makes James Bond look like a wimp. And, with the film feeling so much like a kissing cousin to painful, latter-day Bond efforts like Goldeneye, that may have been the intent. Cruise has always seemed like an actor who ignored his celebrity status, yet in this film he must have bought into the myth. If Tom Cruise spent less time trying to be cool and more time just being Tom Cruise who is cool, Mission: Impossible 2 might have been a less impossible mission to pull off.