Mission: Impossible 2

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Moves with terrific energy, alternating riveting action sequences with intimate material in a manner that's pure Woo.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's eye candy that detonates.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

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.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Keeps the pulse pounding without sacrificing laughs or logic.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Every car chase, every plane crash, every potential drop off a cliff is a masterpiece of grace and surprise.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

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.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Such a feast of outlandish pleasures it'll send you home steam-cleaned and shrink-wrapped.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

More evolved, more confident, more sure-footed in the way it marries minimal character development to seamless action.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Check your brains at the popcorn stand and hang on for a spectacular ride.

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

There's also a nice cheekiness to the material written by Robert Towne ("Chinatown"), and the usual cool high-tech toys are deployed.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

Strangely, what it most lacks is the genuine tension found in the first "Mission"'s signature set pieces.

Slate David Edelstein

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.

TNT RoughCut J. Rentilly

It is ultimately the film's reliance on this thumping action assault that keeps it from true summer-movie greatness.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

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.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

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.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Suggests that Cruise the actor may have outgrown this kind of stuff.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

Woo delivers a vintage breakneck, break-arm, break-face 20-minute finale.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Never as much fun as (Woo's) old Chow Yun Fat-starring Chinese pics.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

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."

Boston Globe Jay Carr

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.

Film.com Robert Horton

The problem is that the motion picture around these individual stunts is patently a committee-made artifact.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's actually sharper, less reverential and generally better than "Misson: Impossible."

Film.com Sean Means

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.

Dallas Observer Andy Klein

Abandon all hopes of common sense, and enter the theater with high expectations for visceral entertainment. You won't be disappointed.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

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.

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.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Even the most spectacular things Woo unleashes here feel strangely impersonal.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

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.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

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.

Variety Dennis Harvey

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.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

A vaguely absurd epidemiological thriller filled with elaborately superfluous setups and shamelessly stale James Bond riffs.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

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.