As Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens in theaters, there’s been a lot of debate about the long-running franchise’s best and worst movies. While John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II isn’t the series’ high point (that would be Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol), it’s also better than many fans give it credit for, and it offers a glimpse into an alternate artistic trajectory before the series was taken over by director Christopher McQuarrie. Released 25 years ago today, Mission: Impossible II proved that Tom Cruise taking over the 1960s TV series was more than just a one-off success.
It also cemented the idea of different directors putting their stamp on the material, an idea that lasted until McQuarrie came on board. There’s no mistaking a John Woo film for a Brian De Palma film; Woo takes the building blocks of De Palma’s Mission: Impossible and uses them for something uniquely his own, even within the constrictive framework of a Hollywood blockbuster. In the first few minutes, Woo uses slo-mo black-and-white shots of kids playing Ring Around the Rosie in his signature operatic style to reflect the hazy mental state of dissident scientist Vladimir Nekhorvich (Rade Šerbedžija).
