| 83 |
Portland Oregonian
Moves with terrific energy, alternating riveting action sequences with intimate material in a manner that's pure Woo.
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| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly
It's eye candy that detonates.
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| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
The power of film to irrationally transform and exalt is almost a religion to Woo, and another reason why he was the natural go-to guy for this lucrative movie franchise.
|
| 80 |
Rolling Stone
Keeps the pulse pounding without sacrificing laughs or logic.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
Every car chase, every plane crash, every potential drop off a cliff is a masterpiece of grace and surprise.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
The real deity of the movie is director Woo, who takes complete command of the latest technology -- hyperspeed editing, breathtaking cinematography, 10-out-of-10 stunt work -- to create brilliant action sequences.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
Such a feast of outlandish pleasures it'll send you home steam-cleaned and shrink-wrapped.
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| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
More evolved, more confident, more sure-footed in the way it marries minimal character development to seamless action.
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| 75 |
New York Post
Check your brains at the popcorn stand and hang on for a spectacular ride.
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| 75 |
USA Today
There's also a nice cheekiness to the material written by Robert Towne ("Chinatown"), and the usual cool high-tech toys are deployed.
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| 74 |
Mr. Showbiz
Strangely, what it most lacks is the genuine tension found in the first "Mission"'s signature set pieces.
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| 70 |
Slate
At his best (Woo)'s too promiscuous with the slow motion; and once those doves start fluttering in he enters a new dimension in self-parody.
|
| 70 |
TNT RoughCut
It is ultimately the film's reliance on this thumping action assault that keeps it from true summer-movie greatness.
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| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The story line is the typical M:I labyrinthine mess, made even more confusing by the always challenging Robert Towne as screenwriter, and by the continuation and overuse of the flawlessly lifelike "mask" device established in Part One.
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| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
As pure a summer popcorn overdose as you're likely to find, M:i-2 is breezy, breathless, brainless fun, falling just short of Woo's own "Face/Off" but head and shoulders above anything else out there just now.
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| 63 |
Miami Herald
Suggests that Cruise the actor may have outgrown this kind of stuff.
|
| 63 |
San Francisco Examiner
Woo delivers a vintage breakneck, break-arm, break-face 20-minute finale.
|
| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Never as much fun as (Woo's) old Chow Yun Fat-starring Chinese pics.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
There's solid chemistry between Cruise and the stunning Newton, a superb actress previously restricted to such ethnic roles as Sally Hemings in "Jefferson in Paris" and the title role in "Beloved."
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
Hard-driving and propulsive as it is, the film is unable to hide the fact that Woo seems not only to be repeating himself, but parodying his earlier films on a much bigger scale, more crudely and coarsely.
|
| 60 |
Film.com
The problem is that the motion picture around these individual stunts is patently a committee-made artifact.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
It's actually sharper, less reverential and generally better than "Misson: Impossible."
|
| 60 |
Film.com
Isn't bad as summer action fare goes -- big and loud, impressively staged by Hong Kong action auteur John Woo, a combination of special effects and eye-popping stunt maneuvers threaded by a plotline that doesn't make sense in the slightest.
|
| 60 |
Dallas Observer
Abandon all hopes of common sense, and enter the theater with high expectations for visceral entertainment. You won't be disappointed.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
The stagy emotionalism Mr. Woo specializes in is not ideally suited to his gifts, and Mr. Cruise, his jaw churning to indicate ambivalence and pain, mostly registers confusion and fatigue, soon amply shared by the audience.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
Marc Caro
Blanks, in a sense, are what M:I-2 is firing. You see the flash, you hear the bang, but the impact never comes.
|
| 50 |
Salon.com
Even the most spectacular things Woo unleashes here feel strangely impersonal.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
Woo's patented pyrotechnics - intricate editing, acrobatic camera movements, slow-motion mayhem - lend intermittent sparks to the violent action sequences, but the two-dimensional characters have little personality.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Woo's aggressive, cartoony attack in the film, which makes for its biggest delights, also wipes out whatever chance it might have had of making an emotional impact.
|
| 40 |
Chicago Reader
Dispenses so many rubber masks to allow the characters to swap identities that no hero or villain winds up carrying any moral weight at all.
|
| 30 |
Variety
Even more empty a luxury vehicle than its predecessor, M:I 2 pushes the envelope in terms of just how much flashy packaging an audience will buy when there's absolutely nada inside.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
A vaguely absurd epidemiological thriller filled with elaborately superfluous setups and shamelessly stale James Bond riffs.
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| 25 |
Charlotte Observer
Mostly, you get a pain in the head from the assault on your senses and déjà vu as thick as heartburn after an anchovy pizza.
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