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Axel Matfin

Live review - Mission Impossible 2: Nu-Metal the Movie

I will be watching and providing my thoughts on Mission Impossible 2. Easily most people's least favourite film in the series, although I personally think 3 is the worst. However I'm interested to give this a spin for all the Limp Bizkit, Oakley sunglasses, John Wu hot off the serious critical and commercial success of FaceOff (something I've never understood) comedically self serious Cruise and full tilt year 2000 energy. My mission, should I choose to make it all the way to the end of the movie is to stay engaged for the film's dead zones of quality. This discussion will self destruct after my 3rd vodka soda.

Comments 96

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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
The vocal chord patch is the best tech from this movie.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
It's hilarious that the villain premise is more sophisticated than most Covid conspiracists could cobble together.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
Oh shit one of the only interesting twists in the movie!
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
Sick sweaty Brendan Gleeson is gnar.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
Oh so a pharma company wants to buy a bio weapon to - yawwwwn. I guess in 2000 this might have been an idea, but it doesn't really go anywhere. I feel like later Mission Movies make the stakes SUPER high, for an IMMEDIATE thing. And slow burn like this and the Rabbit's Foot in 3 are just lame in my opinion.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
"If you don't get out of there I'm coming in to get you" - man I can't help but think of this subtext of Cruise just really trying to establish how desperate he was to control a relationship at this point in time. Vanilla Sky is only a couple years later and that feels like an elegy to regret and wishing you could start over.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
Jesus the guy who dies of the Chimera virus looks like Gabor Mate.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
A handoff scene with Naya (Thandie) and Ethan's character is equally silly, and smoldering.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
Why does it always feel like if Ethan had like....4-5 more people all this would be a lot easier?
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
By that I mean the envelope drop after she pick pockets the bad guy at the race track.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
John Wu knows how to communicate the small stuff effectively.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
There's so much explanation into tech that we'd take for granted today. It's the same in all spy movies from this era, even the divine Casino Royale, but mission movies always kinda invent their own tech.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
I love horse track scenes because they are so exotic. The texture of the racetrack is just great background.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
This bad guy is so bad I just keep forgetting his name. He's just kinda a slob and you don't really see the sophistication that would have him double for Ethan. No wonder Ethan didn't like him.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
Horse Races. I love Horse races on screen. Seabiscuit rules.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
Boring ass scene with a goon and the bad guy about whether or not they trust the Thandie character. This could all be subverted by a better scene with Thandie and the villain, but then he wouldn't get to use his cigar cutter to suggest he might cut off your finger or as a nihilist might say "johnson".
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
Gorgeous landscape hero shot with Cruise silhouetted "Every search for a hero..." lol this is as grandiose as anything in Final Reckoning.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
Yeah, don't love the whole her as a sexual object pawn in this whole thing. I feel like there would be a better way to give her some sort of agency of seducing him - rather than just him immediately being a pig. Like this MF should have some reservations about this.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
Man this guy takes "the implication" to a whole new level.
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Axel MatfinAugust 25, 2025
39 Minutes in.