Generally, spy franchises are built around the personality of the hero. The Jason Bourne series, like its titular protagonist, is stoic, clam and intense with bursts of energy. It’s compelling how little of his personality Matt Damon shows in that role. The James Bond series, on the other hand, has ebbed and flowed around the character its leads have brought to the screen. Sean Connery’s Bond was charming, irreverent and sometimes goofy. Daniel Craig’s has been handsome and a bit sorrowful. Pierce Brosnan’s was suave in the way a sturdy laminate is suave.

The interesting thing about the Mission: Impossible film series is that the films have changed to suit the personalities of their directors instead of their actors. Likewise, Ethan Hunt is a bit different in every film. In the first movie, Cruise plays foil to the franchises serial/noir roots represented by Jon Voight. Brian DePalma plays with the themes and tropes familiar to the TV series and uses Cruise’s Hunt to burst them open, attending to detail with meticulousness and craft.

It’s clear from the opening scenes of Mission: Impossible II that John Woo doesn’t care about any of that. He wants action and explosions, motorcycles and sex scenes. Brian DePalma wants you to wonder. John Woo wants you experience something.

The plot is simple and outside of a few mask-reveal tricks there aren’t any twists. Woo is a fantastic action director, combining close-ups and clever framing with wide and medium range movement to make you feel like you are part of the action without losing the sense of what’s going on. It’s a tricky balance that some of the most acclaimed action movie directors haven’t mastered and some of the most derided have (Michael Bay, explosions and all, is the king of this kind of filmmaking). If only someone could teach Mike and John how to write.

Interestingly, Ronald D. Moore of Battlestar Galactica fame gets a “story by” credit in this one: A terrifying genetically-modified flu virus was created in a lab in the interest of creating a super-vaccine that could fight it, as well as every other strain of influenza. I have no idea if this makes scientific sense but it sounds compelling. The scientist decides to transport the virus and the vaccine to Los Angeles because if he didn’t there would be no way of the virus getting stolen and sold on the black market as a chemical weapon. The IMF sends a hotheaded secretly-evil possible rogue agent to pose as Ethan Hunt and escort the scientist to L.A. because they can’t find Ethan Hunt and Ethan Hunt is of course the only person the scientist trusts. Then the hotheaded secretly-evil possible rogue agent does what no one would have expected and goes rogue – crashing the plane and murdering everyone on board, then stealing the virus and vaccine so he sell them to a biomedical conglomerate looking to corner the market and make a boatload of cash. Ethan Hunt has to recruit a team of agents to help him get the virus back and the team includes the rogue agent’s ex-girlfriend who promptly falls in love with Hunt, Ving Rhames because of fan service, and Billy Bragg because the movie takes place in Australia and also because someone on the home team has to die.

The movie progresses pretty much how you’d expect, with a wonderful clone of the M:I I heist in the atrium of a biomedical research lab in Sydney, and a terrific motorcycle chase / fight scene at the end between Hunt and the villain, played by Dougray Scott.

It’s been discussed before, by me, and by other people whose reviews actually matter, that Tom Cruise basically IS Ethan Hunt, and that his effort to provide realism in his films by doing his own stunts is what provides the intensity that makes them engaging. In this one, he hangs by one hand from a cliff, does some cool motorcycle tricks, and dropkicks Dougray Scott in the chest. It’s totally plausible that Cruise actually learned how to do all of these things for the movie, though there are enough cutaways and careful cropping to indicate that some of the work was done by a double. Whatever, it works, and if the music is occasionally cheesy or if you roll your eyes when Tom Cruise emerges from a flaming hallway behind two majestic soaring doves just do your best to ignore the symbolism and unintentional comedy and remember what kind of movie you’re watching.

But here’s the thing: Cruise is not good as a romantic lead. When Tom Cruise, romantic lead in a feature film, is accompanied by some character note about how he is a) psychotic (Jerry Maguire) b) a huge dork (Cocktail) or c) completely out of his league (Eyes Wide Shut), it works. But he is not nor has he ever been classically cool in the James Dean sense. And that’s what John Woo tries to do with him, hoping that the audience won’t notice that he has no chemistry whatsoever with Thandie Newton or that when he lies on top of her, stares into her eyes and says “Damn, you’re beautiful,” it sounds like he’s reading from a fortune cookie.

If you can get past this, you’ll have fun watching Mission: Impossible II. I love that it exists as this unique little snowflake in a film franchise that has gotten increasingly bombastic and serious. While it’s not a particularly good movie, it’s reminiscent of a time when even Hollywood valued the style and personality of a particularly interesting director rather than just giving the next Marvel movie to whoever made a well-reviewed indie film last year and trusting that they won’t take any big risks.

Next: Vanilla Sky