Early in Mission: Impossible II, we’re allowed to catch a glimpse of the Tom Cruise of the future. After an opening sequence re-introducing the audience to the first film’s world of mask-based espionage and deception, where an undercover Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is revealed as not the real Ethan Hunt at all, we spend some time luxuriating in the genuine article. We know this Ethan is real because there’s no reason on earth for anyone to wear a lifelike Cruise mask while free-climbing a rocky cliff – at one point hanging from a single arm as he readjusts his bearing, narrowly avoiding a plummet to his death. When he reaches a summit and receives a message from his bosses at the IMF, it’s made crystal clear that he hasn’t been chasing bad guys, or retrieving some obscurely hidden MacGuffin. This is Ethan Hunt on vacation.
Abject thrill-seeking is not an aspect of his character revealed in the first Mission: Impossible from four years earlier; nor, really, is it particularly present in the third movie, from six years later. Even the later model of Ethan Hunt, who Cruise has steered into every more death-defying stunts, doesn’t seem likely to do this, or much of anything, for fun. But the current Cruise, who risks his real body rather than tagging in a stunt man, is glimpsed in this scene, which apparently did not feature a double. It’s a jump forward in a movie that is otherwise very much of its year 2000 release date.
That’s true of its music choices (the famous “Mission: Impossible” theme reinterpreted by Metallica and Limp Bizkit, though the Fred Durst vocals in the film are as minimal as possible), its directorial vintage (John Woo deep in his brief American phase, following the success of Face/Off), and the casual misogyny (“To go to bed with a man and lie to him?” Hunt’s superior, played by Anthony Hopkins, says when Hunt questions a female recruit’s suitability for a Notorious-style mission. “She’s a woman. She has all the training she needs.” It’s a line that wouldn’t be out of place in a movie from its inspiration’s 1944 release year, in wit or cruelty). But it’s most true of its position in Cruise’s storied career.
Back in May 2000, Mission: Impossible II was Cruise’s third movie in 12 months, and positioned as a box office comeback of sorts. He was still one of the most popular and recognizable stars in the world. But following the one-two punch of the first Mission and Jerry Maguire in 1996, one of the more commercially impressive single-year double features ever fashioned, he spent a lot of time working on Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. That and Magnolia both came out in 1999 – another highly impressive double feature, but not necessarily from a financial point of view. Both movies were challenging, adult-oriented dramas, and although such things weren’t as close to extinction as they are now, Cruise’s presence could only do so much (especially in Magnolia, which featured his first genuine ensemble role since becoming a star). Mission: Impossible II was an easy commercial layup, a hotly anticipated teaming with action maestro John Woo and an easy pick for the biggest movie of the summer.
And that’s how it played out, more or less. Mission: Impossible II outgrossed the original, outgrossed the summer 2000 competition, and remains still the second-highest-grossing movie of the series in North America. If you adjust for inflation, it’s first – by a lot. It also led to the biggest break in the series’ 30-year history, in part because it ultimately wasn’t perceived as especially good: not as good as the first, not as good as Face/Off, not as good as Gladiator, which came out a few weeks earlier. It didn’t hurt Cruise’s career; how could his biggest movie ever in raw numbers do that? But it did hurt Ethan Hunt’s.
I personally have vivid memories of anticipating this sequel and leaving feeling deflated, as if the filmmakers hadn’t gotten as excited about another Mission: Impossible as I had been. Yes, there was big Woo-approved action, that wonderful Hopkins cameo, and some Hitchcock riffing that felt appropriate for a sequel to a Brian De Palma movie (not that I was any kind of a Hitchcock expert at 19). But the movie drifted further away from the whole Mission: Impossible idea; instead of assembling an elite team, Hunt falls in love with the thief Nyah (Thandiwe Newton), who the IMF convinces to reconnect with her ex-lover Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), a former agent who is after a deadly biological weapon. Almost as an afterthought, Hunt is allowed to bring along Luther (Ving Rhames) from the first movie, and Billy Baird (John Polson), an Australian wisecracker who feels like a barely-tolerated low-level utility player. It’s a four-person skeleton crew that shares maybe two scenes together.
Again, the second film pre-visions later installments, because there is certainly a running unofficial theme of Cruise being physically isolated from his teammates, despite pledging his undying loyalty to all of them, even the ones he’s only known for a few days. And there are moments where Mission: Impossible II actually addresses the whole Cult of Cruise deal more explicitly than the recent sequels, as did so many of his roles at the time, from the confidently out-of-his-depth doctor who everyone (except possibly his wife) wants to fuck in Eyes Wide Shut to the secretly wounded pick-up artist peddling vile manipulations in Magnolia. A year and change later, he’d be wearing a “facial prosthetic” in Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky, further dissecting the optics and opacity of his hot-shot image.
In the second Mission, it’s others who have trouble wearing the Cruise mask. Sean Ambrose seethes with hatred towards Ethan Hunt, at one point explaining that impersonating him is exhausting because it forces him to affect Hunt’s (which is really to say Cruise’s) world-beating grin; he also runs through his accurate guess at how Hunt will plan his big mid-movie break-in, in a way that weirdly feels like there’s already been two or three Mission: Impossible movies, rather than just the one. Woo flirts with the operatic doubling that fueled Face/Off, with some repeated blathering about a hero requiring a villain as a proving ground; Sean Ambrose, I fear, is not that villain, because outside of his general irritation with Hunt, he’s prone to the world’s dullest temper tantrums. There’s no real psychological acuity to his or Hunt’s anguish over Nyah’s affections; it’s all just a series of mask-pulls. Ethan and Nyah flirt and fall in love by racing and then bashing their cars together, and if that sounds like a balletic flight of Woo insanity, well, good luck to you. On screen it mostly just plays as mutually psychotic (which would be great if the rest of the movie ever hit that register).
Yet there’s enough good material in Mission: Impossible II to understand why it’s since been reclaimed as an underappreciated entry (even if it’s a little disingenuous to try to make that sale over the most-seen movie in the series). The scene where Ethan first meets Nyah, interrupting her necklace heist at a party in Spain, has To Catch a Thief energy, the racetrack scene that so specifically knocks off Notorious fuses heated romantic dynamics with old-fashioned spycraft, and Woo’s climactic action sequences have dazzling moments. It plays a little better as part of a longer series, where it can look more like a curiosity than a creative dead end. As a year-2000 Cruise check-in, though, it’s at once predictive of his later attempts to recapture his glory, and a mistimed attempt at recaptured glory. It stands as one of the only Cruise movies between the first and third Mission: Impossible to not really work, failing to recognize that the star couldn’t simply go back into hot-shot mode and chase it with a few self-aware critiques from the bad guy. His movies before and after this one introduce some sweaty desperation to his golden-god image; Mission: Impossible II threatens to harden its lead back into a motionless idol.
Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on social media under the handle @rockmarooned.
