| Mission: Impossible II | |
|---|---|
 The theatrical poster for the film | |
| Universe | Mission: Impossible |
| Directed by | John Woo |
| Produced by | Tom Cruise |
| Written by | Robert Towne Ronald D. Moore (story) Brannon Braga (story) |
| Starring | Tom Cruise Dougray Scott Thandie Newton Ving Rhames Richard Roxburgh John Polson Brendan Gleeson Rade Serbedzija |
| Production company |
Cruise/Wagner Productions |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $125,000,000 |
| Gross revenue | $546,388,105 |
| Preceded by | Mission: Impossible |
| Followed by | Mission: Impossible III |
| “ | Good morning, Mr. Hunt. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves the recovery of a stolen item, designated 'Chimera'. You may select any two team members, but it is essential that the third team member be Nyah Nordoff-Hall. She is a civilian and a highly capable professional thief. You have 48 hours to recruit Ms. Nordoff-Hall and meet me in Seville to receive your assignment. As always, should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions. And Mr. Hunt, the next time you go on holiday, please be good enough to let us know where you're going. This message will self-destruct in five seconds. | ” |
–IMF's mission to Ethan | ||
Mission: Impossible II (marketed as M:I-2 and on Blu-ray as Mission: Impossible 2) is a 2000 American action spy film directed by John Woo and starring Tom Cruise, who also served as the film's producer. It is the sequel to Brian De Palma's 1996 film Mission: Impossible and has Cruise reprising his role as Agent Ethan Hunt of the IMF, a top-secret espionage and clandestine operation agency. In Mission: Impossible 2, Ethan Hunt is tasked with destroying a dangerous virus before it's manufacturers can spread it. The film is the second installment of the Mission: Impossible film series and was followed by Mission: Impossible III (2006), Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015), Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018), Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023) and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025).
Plot[]
Ethan Hunt, while on holiday, is alerted by the IMF that someone has used his identity to assist Russian molecular biologist, Dr. Vladimir Nekhorvich, of Biocyte Pharmaceuticals to enter the United States, only to kill him in a subsequent plane crash. Nekhorvich, an old friend of Ethan, had forewarned the IMF of his arrival, planning to deliver a new bio-weapon, Chimera, and its cure, Bellerophon, both of which he was forced to develop by Biocyte, into the IMF's hands. With his death, IMF is worried that the virus is out in the open, believing that rogue IMF agent Sean Ambrose is responsible. IMF assigns Ethan to recover it. Ethan is told that he can select two members of his team to help him, but the third person to help him must be Nyah Nordoff-Hall, a professional thief presently operating in Seville, Spain, as she will be able to get close to Ambrose, being an ex-girlfriend.
After recruiting Nyah, Ethan meets two members of his team--computer expert Luther Stickell and pilot Billy Baird in Sydney, Australia, where Biocyte laboratories are located along with Ambrose's residence. As Ethan and the others stake out Biocyte, Nyah gets close to Ambrose and begins to work him for information related to the Chimera virus. Later at Ambrose's house, Hugh Stamp, Ambrose's right-hand man, doubts Nyah's loyalty to Ambrose and Ambrose rewards him by snapping off a portion of his left finger. At a horse racing event, Ambrose quietly meets with Biocyte's CEO, John C. McCloy, and shows him a video of the Chimera virus affecting Dr. Sergei Gradski, one of Nekhorvich's colleagues, taken from Biocyte, so he can blackmail McCloy into cooperating with them. Nyah is able to pocket the video footage long enough to transfer it to Ethan and his team, who learn that the Chimera virus has a 20-hour dormant period before it causes death through mass destruction of the victim's red blood cells. Bellerophon can save the victim only if used within that 20-hour window.
The IMF team kidnaps McCloy and learns that Nekhorvich had actually injected himself with Chimera, the only way he could smuggle the virus from Biocyte, and had all the known samples of Bellerophon, now presently in Ambrose's hands. Ambrose had forced McCloy to sell him the virus for £37,000,000 in exchange for the samples of Bellerophon. Ethan's team plans to break into Biocyte and destroy the virus. Ambrose, posing as Ethan, tricks Nyah into revealing Ethan's plan. Ambrose secures Nyah and prepares to raid Biocyte himself to secure the virus. Ethan is able to destroy all but one sample of the virus before Ambrose interrupts him, and a firefight ensues. Ethan learns that Ambrose is holding Nyah and stops firing, during which Ambrose orders Nyah to retrieve the last sample. When she does so, she injects herself with it, thus preventing Ambrose from simply killing her to get it. As Ambrose takes Nyah and Ethan escapes from the laboratory in the ensuing gun battle between Ambrose's men and Biocyte security personnel, Ethan starts a 20-hour countdown before the virus takes over Nyah's body.
Ambrose opts to let Nyah wander the streets of Sydney in a daze, intending to trigger a Chimera pandemic in Australia, and orders McCloy to effectively hand over enough control of Biocyte to make him the majority shareholder; Ambrose's plan is now to make a fortune when prices of Biocyte's stock skyrocket due to demand for Bellerophon. Ethan's team is able to locate and infiltrate the meeting, stealing the samples of Bellerophon while taking out many of Ambrose's men. Luther and Billy locate Nyah, who has wandered to a cliff side, intent on killing herself to prevent Chimera from spreading. As the two IMF agents bring Nyah to Ethan, he and Ambrose engage in a vicious fight. With little time left on the 20-hour countdown, Ethan finally gains the upper hand over Ambrose and kills him, and Luther injects Nyah with Bellerophon. IMF clears Nyah's criminal record, and allows Ethan to continue his vacation with her in Sydney.
Cast[]
- Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt
- Dougray Scott as Sean Ambrose
- Thandie Newton as Nyah Nordoff-Hall
- Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell
- Richard Roxburgh as Hugh Stamp
- John Polson as Billy Baird
- Brendan Gleeson as John C. McCloy
- Rade Serbedzija as Vladimir Nekhorvich
- William Mapother as Wallis
- Mathew Wilkinson as Michael
- Dominic Purcell as Ulrich
- Christian Manon as Sergei Gradski
- Anthony Hopkins as Swanbeck (uncredited)
- Unknown actor as Simon
Music[]
- Hijack
- Iko Iko
- Seville
- Nyah
- Mission: Impossible Theme
- The Heist
- Ambrose
- Bio-Techno
- Injection
- Bare Island
- Chimera
- The Bait
- Mano a Mano
- Mission Accomplished
- Nyah and Ethan
Reception[]
Box Office[]
On opening day, Mission: Impossible 2 made $12.5 million, making it the fourth-highest-grossing Wednesday opening, behind Men in Black, Independence Day and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. At that time, it had the largest number of screenings, playing at 3,653 theaters and beating Scream 3. The film would go on to hold this record until it was surpassed by Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone the following year. It grossed $57,845,297, crossing over Toy Story 2 to have the third-highest-grossing opening weekend of all time, behind The Lost World: Jurassic Park and The Phantom Menace. Moreover, the film surpassed its predecessor Mission: Impossible for not only having the highest-grossing opening weekend for a film based on a TV show, but also the largest opening weekend for any Paramount film. It also dethroned Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me for scoring the biggest opening weekend for a spy film. The latter record would be held until 2002 when it was given to Austin Powers in Goldmember. Three years later in 2005, War of the Worlds surpassed Mission: Impossible 2 for having the highest-grossing opening weekend for a Paramount film. Then in 2007, The Simpsons Movie took the record for having the biggest opening weekend for a film based on a TV show. As for Mission: Impossible 2, it earned $91.8 million in its first six days, becoming the second-largest Memorial Day opening weekend, just after The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
When Mission: Impossible 2 first opened, the film was ranked number one at the box office, topping out Dinosaur. It held on to the number one spot for two weekends until it was overtaken by Gone in 60 Seconds. Around this time, the film went on to become the highest-grossing film of the year domestically, beating Gladiator. It would remain so until that December when it was dethroned by How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The film eventually grossed $215,409,889 in its North American release and $330,978,216 in other territories, totaling $546,388,105 worldwide, the highest-grossing film of 2000. It is John Woo's highest-grossing film of all time, surpassing Face/Off, and was the highest-grossing film in the Mission: Impossible series until the release of the fourth film, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, in 2011.
Critics[]
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes indicates Mission: Impossible 2 has an overall approval rating of 56% based on 155 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Your cranium may crave more substance, but your eyes will feast on the amazing action sequences." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 59 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". The site's Audience Score sits at 42% with 250,000 verified ratings, making the franchise's lowest rated instalment. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, down from the first film's "B+".
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film three stars, stating "if the first movie was entertaining as sound, fury, and movement, this one is more evolved, more confident, more sure-footed in the way it marries minimal character development to seamless action." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly felt the film was a "throwaway pleasure" but also "a triumph of souped-up action." Ella Taylor of LA Weekly said that "every car chase, every plane crash, every potential drop off a cliff is a masterpiece of grace and surprise." Desson Howe of The Washington Post said that "[John] Woo [...] takes complete command of the latest technology to create brilliant action sequences." Lou Lumenick of the New York Post said, "Check your brains at the popcorn stand and hang on for a spectacular ride."
J. Hoberman of The Village Voice called the film "a vaguely absurd thriller filled with elaborately superfluous setups and shamelessly stale James Bond riffs." Dennis Harvey of Variety said the film is "even more empty a luxury vehicle than its predecessor" and that it "pushes the envelope in terms of just how much flashy packaging an audience will buy when there's absolutely nada inside." Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader said that "no hero or villain winds up carrying any moral weight at all."
In a retrospective commentary in 2012, Brad Brevet noted the film has significant similarities in plot and themes to Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 film Notorious.
Mission: Impossible 2 was nominated for two Golden Raspberry Awards at the 2000 ceremony, including Worst Remake or Sequel and Worst Supporting Actress for Thandie Newton. It was also nominated for a Stinker Award at the 2000 ceremony for Worst Song (Limp Bizkit's "Take a Look Around").
Gallery[]
Title sequence[]
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