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I love being born on May 26th. I am almost always off of school for Memorial Day weekend, it is practically summer, and the best blockbuster movies always come out this weekend. One of the biggest moneymaking weekends on the movie calendar, the end of May is the time for franchise starters and sequels with hundreds of millions funneled into them to be unleashed. This year two potential top-grossing sequels, Kung Fu Panda 2 and The Hangover Part II, will duke it out for the number one spot. But eleven years ago this weekend, it was only one sequel gearing up to conquer the chart: Mission: Impossible II.

Referred to as the very cool, but easily confusing M:i-2 on all promotional materials, this film was the start of the first summer for the new millennium. I have always been a fan of blow ‘em up spy films (no need to tell you that Salt was one of my favorite summer movies of 2010) and M:i-2 easily has probably more bullets going off in it than the Iraq war. But, while we see the flashy guns, we never feel the impact in this downer of a sequel.

I have not seen the TV series, but I have enjoyed the Mission: Impossible movie franchise. While I personally think Tom Cruise of as a wacko, he is an undeniable movie star. Who else could have made Knight and Day (scratch M:i-2 as being confusing. This title is all pun and nothing to do with the film) enjoyable?

While the first Mission: Impossible was fun and light, the sequel is all brawn and no brain. A house of cards in a tornado can hold up better than this plot.

Cruise, back in Ethan Hunt mode, is sent out to destroy a powerful influenza virus created by some pharmaceutical baddies looking to make money by selling the vaccine. Thandie Newton gets her first major career break here as the obligatory hot, mysterious, female lead, but her involvement is benign at best.

With director John Woo’s final cut reported to clock in at three and a half hours, it's no wonder why the film has more holes in it than the bodies of the bad guys Cruise puts bullets through (the theatrical cut is an audience-friendly two hours). Thought to be the next great action director, Woo quickly fell off the Hollywood map after Mission: Impossible II. While I like Woo’s edgy style (although the overuse of slow-mo here is quite annoying; the movie could be about a half hour shorter if it was sped up to normal speed), Hollywood did not necessarily agree with his tastes. Hampered by studio execs, Woo’s Chinese film background did not translate well to America. With almost every film he has directed in the States, there have been reports of studio in-fighting, namely over his excessive use of violence, garnering an R-rating. In fact, M:i-2 was slapped with an R until major edits.

Following this film with the financial flops Windtalkers and Paycheck, Woo hasn’t made a film for US audiences since 2003, and it doesn’t look like he has any immediate plans in the future stateside.

M:i-2 has many problems, but one of the biggest is staying memorable. Nothing seems fresh or exciting. The Matrix was released a year earlier, capitalizing on the slow-mo, and the original Mission: Impossible already showed off fancy wirework. That leaves little individuality left for M:i-2, besides a thrilling mountain climbing scene. Even 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (a female Indy Jones/Mission: Impossible crossover) has more impression-leaving action sequences than this, making Ethan Hunt’s second mission not with us.

Oddly enough, the action scenes should have been the best thing about the film. With most movies, I complain that it seems as if the action scenes are inserted. For M:i-2, the plot was inserted around the high-octane set pieces. Woo already had combat scenes he wanted to film and a lead female actress cast (Thandie Newton), even before the script was written. This resulted in Robert Towne’s (a frequent Cruise collaborator and scripter of one of my favorite films, Chinatown) script having the bullets and explosions taking front and center.

Released on a Wednesday to exploit the long Memorial Day weekend, the film’s six day haul was a huge $91.8 million, or $134 million with today’s ticket prices (the traditional Friday-Sunday gross was $57.8 million – still good enough to be the biggest opening weekend of the year). However, audiences and critics were quick to pick up on the film’s OK-but-not-great quality. Taking a chopping at the legs, M:i-2 wound up with a still hefty $215 million total (the third highest of the year). Budgeted at $125 million and buoyed by $330 million overseas, this second outing wounded up pretty profitable for Paramount.

Mission: Impossible III was released six years later (due to a last minute switch of directors from Joe Carnahan to J.J. Abrams, dramatically altering the film’s plot, delaying it for over a year) to much friendlier reviews but a much smaller audience. However, this release was not too long after Tom Cruise sent his PR team in a tailspin, jumping on Oprah’s couch, and spewing his scientology beliefs. Paramount still has some faith in the franchise, releasing part 4 (or is it M:i-4?) this December in IMAX, five years later. Surprisingly for a blockbuster franchise, the films have wide yet welcoming gaps between them to get audiences re-energized.

One line in the movie sums up the main problem. Ethan tells his commander that the mission seems only “difficult.” In response he is told, “This isn’t mission difficult. It is mission impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you.” Sadly, this botched mission is less of a walk and more of a stroll.

Verdict: Not With Us
5 out of 10