I Think The Most Hated Mission: Impossible Movie is Actually One of the Best

Twenty-five years since its release, John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2 is often regarded as the most divisive and arguably disliked entry in the franchise, but it’s easily my pick for the Mission: Impossible MVP. In Mission: Impossible 2, Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt, ace spy for the shadowy IMF organization, accepting his mission to retrieve a deadly new virus codenamed Chimera. Hunt also joins forces with professional jewel thief Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandiwe Newton), whom he quickly falls in love with. Mission: Impossible 2 was the biggest box office hit of the year 2000 with a grand $526 million worldwide haul, but its box office success is not necessarily reflective of its overall reception since its release.

The Mission: Impossible franchise has had an epic run of nearly three decades, (culminating with the Memorial Day 2025 weekend release of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning), with Cruise and the franchise’s numerous directors packing more action and stunts into each new installment. While there’s no denying that the series is one of the most popular and defining theatrical action movie franchises of the modern age, the crucial role Mission: Impossible 2 played in getting the series there has been woefully overlooked and underappreciated. Looking over the whole series, Mission: Impossible 2 stands out from the rest with an explosive energy virtually unmatched by even the strongest of the franchise, and in the opinion of this writer, it is the very foundation of Tom Cruise’s transformation into the big-screen Evel Knievel audiences have to come to revere him as.

John Woo Was Perfect To Direct a Tom Cruise-Led Mission: Impossible Movie

John Woo is, in short, one of the greatest action filmmakers of all time. Die-hard fans of Hong Kong action like myself know John Woo well as one of the great auteurs of the “heroic bloodshed” subgenre, where flashy and explosive gun-fu combines with heart-racing stunt work. Woo’s Hong Kong work in action films like The Killer (later re-made in 2024 for Peacock to all-around pretty good effect by Woo himself), Bullet in the Head, and Hard Boiled is well-known and well-loved, but American audiences were first introduced to his brand of dove-laden gun-fu and heroic bloodshed in the ’90s with hits like the Jean-Claude Van Damme actioner Hard Target, Broken Arrow, and the John Travolta-Nic Cage double whammy of hammy, bullet-blasting fun, Face/Off. And yet, as great as all of these are, for my money, Mission: Impossible 2 tops them all for many reasons, not the least of which being the winning combo of Woo and the Mission: Impossible franchise itself.

As a fan of the Mission: Impossible TV series, Tom Cruise sought to bring its spy intrigue and labyrinthine plotlines to contemporary audiences with the kind of action and stunts modern moviegoers expect from summer blockbusters. Few action filmmakers could have been as much of a match made in heaven for Cruise’s vision as John Woo, the Hong Kong legend able to inject the kind of flair and punch that Cruise was game for without breaking a sweat. That, of course, isn’t to take anything away from the contributions of Brian De Palma, J.J. Abrams, Brad Bird, and Christopher McQuarrie, each of whom brought their own contributions to make the Mission: Impossible franchise the long-running big-screen series that it has become. With that said, John Woo found a Hollywood vehicle practically tailor-made for his style in Mission: Impossible 2, and delivered his best on overdrive. The lackluster reputation of Mission: Impossible 2 a quarter century hence confounds me not only as a lover of the franchise in general, but as a lover of action movies of the fast-paced pinnacle of drive, adrenaline, and psychical power that Mission: Impossible 2 reaches.

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Mission: Impossible 2 Is Very Economical as an Action Movie & a Mission: Impossible Movie

The action and stunts of the Mission: Impossible movies have always been a signature element of the series, but in my estimation, no movie in the series balances its story, characters, action, run time, and pacing as marvelously as does Mission: Impossible 2. One important point in that regard is the movie’s run time of 124 minutes, a relatively average figure by summer blockbuster standards. It isn’t uncommon for tentpoles to go a good half hour to 45 minutes beyond that in modern times, including the last several Mission: Impossible movies, and audience tastes for long run times tied to more epic stories has led to some phenomenal entries in the series (such as Mission: Impossible – Fallout, my personal pick for the No. 2 slot of the franchise’s overall ranking). On the flipside, Mission: Impossible 2 understands the mileage of its run time taken in consideration with its plot and action, and the way it utilizes all of them borders on a science.

Consider the movie’s intro sequence to Ethan Hunt, showing the spy free-soloing a cliff face and navigating its dangers with a calm poise, as if this he’s gone on this exact holiday before a dozen times without alerting IMF to his whereabouts. In just this one scene, Mission: Impossible 2 sets the table for everything the audience can expect – a protagonist with no fear, a shadowy spy organization to whom he is a key asset, and stunts and action of the most suspenseful and engaging sort. In its comparatively compact two-hour run time, Mission: Impossible 2 delivers on all the elements introduced in its intro of Ethan as a man on a mission, romancing the world’s most adept jewel thief, and capable of feats of jaw-dropping physicality like flashy gun-fu, complete command of a motorcycle, absolutely superb martial arts skills, and a near-total absence of fear even thousands of feet of the ground with no safety harness of parachute.

Overall, Mission: Impossible 2 keeps the action hard-hitting and fast-paced without losing momentum, while taking time to fully realize Ethan Hunt as a humanized action hero with skills beyond even the most tough-as-nails member of the audience. That is by no means to suggest the longer run times of the subsequent Mission: Impossible movies and other big action blockbusters are a bad call, but by balancing all of the franchise’s elements out with run time and story pacing, Mission: Impossible 2 is the one that gives its audience the most bang for their buck. That Mission: Impossible 2 also has an outstanding soundtrack that includes Limp Bizkit’s rendition of the Mission: Impossible theme and Metallica’s “Disappear” only adds to the movie’s reputation as an action-packed summer spy thriller that is always in motion.

Mission: Impossible 2 Marks the True Beginning of Tom Cruise as a Stunt-Driven Action Hero

Let’s go back to Mission: Impossible 2‘s rock-climbing opening for a moment. Seeing the movie as a kid, the awe I felt in seeing Ethan Hunt fling himself from one side of the cliff face to another simply to make it to a more manageable section of the cliff is something I’ll never forget, and the power of the sequence clearly hasn’t diminished a quarter century later. Case in point – during this past holiday season, my father had Mission: Impossible 2 on, and was just as captivated by Ethan’s rock climbing intro as I was, to the point that he threw his hands into the air and applauded the super spy after he successfully made it to the top. That’s the exact kind of response most have come to expect and look forward to in a Tom Cruise action movie, and the dawn of Tom Cruise as the world’s most fearless action star can truly be pinpointed to Mission: Impossible 2.

Cruise had certainly done his share of action films before, such as Top Gun, Days of Thunder, and the first Mission: Impossible. However, Mission: Impossible 2 feels different in that it plays like a career shift, and even a statement on Cruise’s part, that the stunt work and action of the movie was what he wanted to devote the rest of his career to, and that he wanted to be forever remembered for. Indeed, look at Cruise’s career pre-and-post Mission: Impossible 2, and the latter really stands out for how much Cruise is willing to risk life and limb to give thrill-seeking audiences their money’s worth. Not just the subsequent Mission: Impossible movies, either, but other action-packed Cruise vehicles like The Last Samurai, Jack Reacher, and most especially Top Gun: Maverick, all of which see Cruise throwing himself head-first into fight scenes, stunts, and general danger that would put him right at home in the very Hong Kong action scene that John Woo built his career in.

That even extends to the marketing of Cruise’s filmography, such as the famed video from the making of Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning of Cruise holding onto a biplane with nothing but one hand. As it banks, Cruise parts on a friendly note of, “Hey, let’s all have a great summer! We’ll see you at the movies!” Far from just being a fantastic action movie in its own right, Mission: Impossible 2 charted the career trajectory of Tom Cruise, establishing the actor’s reputation for doing his own ever-more dangerous stunts and elevating the scale of action at play every time. As stunt coordinator Charlie Croughwell once said, “If Tom weren’t an actor, he’d be a hell of a stuntman,” a distinction that is traceable directly back to Cruise giving everything and then some under John Woo’s direction in Mission: Impossible 2, the most underrated Mission: Impossible movie that more than earns the crown of the series’ best from yours truly.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will be released in theaters on May 23rd.