Mission Impossible II

Mission: Impossible II

Starring Tom Cruise, Thandie Newton & Dougray Scott
Story by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga
Screenplay by Robert Towne
Directed by John Woo

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Review by

Mark Greene

Some people like this genre of movie, and I count myself among them. But even action film diehards will have to admit that there is something strangely contrived about John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II. Those of you who are willing to sacrifice expectations for an original plot will allow Robert Towne’s ‘borrowing’ of the basic story and character triangle found in Hitchcock’s 1946 masterpiece, Notorious. If you liked the mask gimmick of John Woo’s last feature film, Face/Off, well then, prepare for the same kind of shenanigans in M:i-2. If this sounds like a tiresome mannequin cloaked in a $135 million jacket, then please read on.

Watching a movie like this clear $40 million in profit within its first month suggests the presence of an uncanny force at work. Not just a slick gadget flick, these filmmakers have overtly slipped us a mythological device that provides a ‘way into’ perhaps perceiving their spectacle on a subliminal level. The mythological gift comes in the form of a hero/monster duo named Bellerophon and Chimaera whose images are depicted in the opening credits. Chimaera appears in the film as the code name for a very nasty virus created by an unscrupulous pharmaceutical company. The Chimaera of mythology is—like this film—a patchwork monster who has the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a dragon. In neat symmetry, the filmmakers give us Bellerophon (the complex Greek hero who slays the Chimaera), as the code name for the virus’s antidote.

The film’s hero, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is told on more than one occasion that ‘every hero requires a villain’ and so we are led to believe all things ‘Tom-like’ will vanquish all things evil, like the bad guy played by Dougray Scott. The Bellerophon/Chimaera coupling supports the notion that there will be an actual winner. What use is a monster, after all, if there is no one to slay it? What use an M:i-2 if you are not at the counter with your $7.50? Thus engaged, your price of admission acts as a wager for good triumphing over evil. The question that remains asks what benefits come from being on the winning side? The mythology suggests a less than black-and-white answer.

While attempting to reach Olympus astride Pegasus, the magnificent flying horse, Bellerophon is “flung to earth by Zeus and lamed by his fall. Odious to all Immortals, Homer says, Bellerophon wandered the earth, his heart consumed with misery, alone, fleeing the haunts of men.” In a nutshell, there is no redemption for Bellerophon based upon his heroics. And, I would like to add, there is nothing to be gleaned from paying your way into M:i-2 except for the knowledge that using a powerful mythological image as a device may backfire for a filmmaker on a subconscious level.

The story behind Bellerophon is perhaps the prescient harbinger of the scintillatingly ripped off plot for M:i-3. In it, I see Tom, alone again, botching up some job. We learn that he has lost Nyah (Thandie Newton) in a shampooing accident in the Alps and has not been the same since. He has this horse . . .

Will you be there?

Mark Greene

July 2000

“in quotes” LaRousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. Trans. Richard Aldington and Delano Ames. New York: Prometheus P, 1959. p 203.