Mission: Impossible II

Mission: Impossible II (marketed as M:I-2 and in the new Blu-ray release, Mission: Impossible 2) is a 2000 American action spy film directed byJohn Woo and starring Tom Cruise, who also served as the film's producer. It is the sequel to Brian De Palma's 1996 film Mission: Impossible and has Cruise reprising his role as agent Ethan Hunt of the IMF, a top-secret espionage and clandestine operation agency. The film is the second installment of the Mission: Impossible film series and was followed by Mission: Impossible III (2006) and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol(2011).



Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), while vacationing, is alerted by the IMF that someone has used his identity to assist Russian bio-chemical expert Dr. Vladimir Nekhorvich (Rade Serbedzija) of Biocyte Pharmaceuticals to enter into the United States, but purposely crashed the commercial airliner en route. Nekhorvich, an old friend of Ethan, had forewarned the IMF of his arrival, planning to deliver a new virus called Chimera and its cure,Bellerophon, both of which he was forced to develop by Biocyte, into the IMF's hands. With the crash of the plane, IMF is worried that the virus is out in the open, believing that IMF agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) is behind the incident. IMF assigns Ethan to recover it. Ethan is told that he can use two members of his team to help him, but the third person to help him must be Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandie Newton), a professional thief presently operating in Seville, Spain as she will be able to get close to Ambrose, being an ex-girlfriend of his.

After recruiting Nyah, Ethan meets his team, computer expert Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and pilot Billy Baird (John Polson) in Sydney, Australia, where Biocyte laboratories are located along with Ambrose's headquarters. As Ethan and the others stake out Biocyte, Nyah gets close to Ambrose and begins to find any information related to the Chimera virus. At a horse racing event, Ambrose quietly meets with Biocyte's CEO, John C. McCloy (Brendan Gleeson), and shows him a video of the Chimera virus affecting one of Nekhorvich's colleagues taken from Biocyte, using the footage to force McCloy to cooperate with them. Nyah is able to steal the video footage long enough to transfer it to Ethan and his team, who learn that the Chimera virus has a 20-hour dormant period before it causes death through mass destruction of the victim's red blood cells. This is depicted through several increasingly graphic pictures, which show the victim dead after 37 hours. Bellerophon can only save the victim if used within the 20-hour window.

The IMF team kidnaps McCloy and learns that Nekhorvich had actually injected himself with Chimera, the only way he could smuggle the virus from Biocyte, and had all the known samples of Bellerophon, now presently in Ambrose's hands. Ambrose has blackmailed McCloy to sell him the virus for £37,000,000 and promising to return the samples of Bellerophon. Ethan's team plans to break into Biocyte and destroy the virus. Ambrose, posing as Ethan, tricks Nyah into revealing Ethan's plan. Ambrose secures Nyah and prepares to raid Biocyte himself to secure the virus. Ethan is able to destroy all but one sample of the virus before Ambrose interrupts him, and an ensuing firefight begins. Ethan learns that Ambrose is holding Nyah and stops firing, during which Ambrose orders Nyah to retrieve the last sample. When she does so, she injects herself with it, thus preventing Ambrose from simply killing her to get it. As Ambrose takes Nyah, Ethan escapes from the laboratory and starts a 20-hour countdown before the virus takes over Nyah's body.

Ambrose opts to let Nyah wander the streets of Sydney in a daze, and orders McCloy to effectively hand over enough control of Biocyte to make him the majority shareholder, or else Nyah's infection will cause a pandemic that will kill 17 million people in Australia alone; Ambrose's plan is to make a fortune when prices of Biocyte's stock skyrocket due to demand for Bellerophon. Ethan's team is able to locate and infiltrate the meeting, stealing the samples of Bellerophon while taking out many of Ambrose's men. Luther and Billy locate Nyah who has wandered to a cliff side, intent on killing herself to prevent Chimera from spreading. As the two IMF agents bring Nyah to Ethan, he and Ambrose engage in a fist fight and wilds out on Ambrose. With little time left on the 20-hour countdown, Ethan finally gains the upper hand over Ambrose and shoots him dead, and then Luther injects Nyah with Bellerophon. Ethan reports to IMF on the successful mission. IMF clears Nyah's criminal record, and allows Ethan to continue his vacation with her in Sydney.

Read more

Mission: Impossible

Mission: Impossible (also known in the Blu-ray release as M:I) is a 1996 American spy film directed by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Cruise. Based on the television series of the same name, the plot follows a new agent, Ethan Hunt and his mission to uncover the mole who has framed him for the murders of his entire IMF team. Work on the script had begun early with filmmaker Sydney Pollack on board, before De Palma, Steven Zaillian, David Koepp, and Robert Towne were brought in. Mission: Impossible went into pre-production without a shooting script. De Palma came up with some action sequences, but Koepp and Towne were dissatisfied with the story that led up to those events.

U2 band members Larry Mullen, Jr. and Adam Clayton produced an electronic dance version of the original theme song. The song went into top ten of music charts around the world and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance. The film was the third-highest-grossing of the year and received positive reviews from film critics. The film marked the beginning of a film series, with sequels Mission: Impossible II, III and Ghost Protocol released in 2000, 2006 and 2011, respectively. A fifth film is in development with Cruise reprising his role.



Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is part of a small team of the Impossible Missions Force (IMF), an unofficial branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Led by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), the team assembles for a mission in Prague to prevent Alexander Golitsyn, an American diplomat, from stealing the non-official cover (NOC) list, a comprehensive list of all covert agents in Eastern Europe, from the U.S. Embassy. The mission goes hopelessly wrong, apparently resulting in the deaths of the entire team except for Ethan. Technician Jack Harmon (Emilio Estevez) is impaled in an elevator shaft, Jim is shot on a bridge by an unknown assailant, Hannah Williams (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) and Jim's wife Claire (Emmanuelle Béart) are both killed by a car bomb and both Sarah Davies (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Golitsyn are stabbed to death by an unknown assailant, and the NOC list is stolen.

After fleeing the scene, Ethan meets with IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) at a restaurant where they discuss the events of that night. Eventually, Ethan realizes that a second IMF team was watching his team during the failed operation. Kittridge then discloses that the operation was a setup meant to draw out a mole in the IMF. The mole has made a deal to sell the list to an arms dealer known as "Max" as part of an operation called "Job 314". As a result, the NOC list taken in the mission was a fake and the computer disk it is on is rigged with a tracking device. After Kittridge informs Ethan of his suspicion that Ethan is the mole, Ethan blows up the floor-to-ceiling aquarium with a stick of explosive chewing gum in the restaurant and flees.

Ethan returns to the IMF safe house where, realizing that "Job 314" refers to a Bible verse in the Book of Job (and presumably the mole's codename as well), Ethan begins email correspondence with Max (Vanessa Redgrave) over a biblical correspondence web site and warns Max about the fake NOC list. Ethan then encounters Claire and discovers that she has survived the mission, having gotten out of the car in which she was waiting before it exploded.

Max arranges a meeting with Ethan where he offers to deliver the real NOC list in exchange for $10 million and a face-to-face meeting with the real Job. Max agrees and she and Ethan then escape moments before a CIA team, alerted by the tracking device, arrives in search of the fake NOC list. Ethan assembles a team of disavowed agents: computer expert Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and obsessive pilot Franz Krieger (Jean Reno), who claims it is a bank heist. Ethan, Luther, Krieger, and Claire infiltrate the CIA's headquarters and successfully steal the full NOC list before escaping to a safe house in London.

While in London, Ethan discovers that his uncle and mother have been falsely arrested for drug trafficking in an attempt by Kittridge to lure him out of hiding. This infuriates Ethan, and he contacts Kittridge who offers to drop the charges if Ethan surrenders. Ethan stays on the line long enough for Kittridge to trace him to London and then hangs up, only to find Jim—wounded, but alive—standing next to him.

Jim, presumed dead in the Prague operation and following Ethan ever since, tells Ethan that Kittridge is the mole and is trying to tie up loose ends. As Ethan listens, he mentally pieces together the operation and realizes that Jim, having become disillusioned with his work, is actually Job and that Krieger—who uses the same distinctive make of knife that was used to kill Sarah and Golitsyn and steal the NOC list—has assisted him. However, Ethan is still doubtful about Claire's place in the conspiracy.

The next day, Max and Ethan arrange to meet aboard the TGV en route to Paris, with Claire and Luther aboard to provide backup. Kittridge is also aboard, having received tickets and a watch from Ethan. Aboard the train, Ethan delivers the NOC list to Max, who directs him to the baggage car to find his money and Job. Claire arrives in the baggage car to meet with her husband, revealing her complicity as she suggests that they leave with the money and let Ethan take the blame. Jim suddenly peels his face away, revealing himself to be Ethan in disguise. They are interrupted by the arrival of the real Jim Phelps: unhinged, armed and demanding that Ethan hand over the money. Ethan does so, but then slowly puts on a pair of glasses from the original operation in Prague, with a camera built into the bridge. The image of Jim, alive, is transmitted to the watch Ethan sent to Kittridge, exposing Job's true identity.

Claire tries to intervene, but Jim kills her and climbs up to the roof of the train, while Krieger, also revealed as a traitor, approaches in a helicopter to extract him. Ethan follows him onto the roof, impeding him and tethering Krieger's helicopter to the train, dragging it into the Channel Tunnel. In the tunnel, Jim leaps to the helicopter. Ethan follows, climbing the helicopter's landing skids and attaching another piece of explosive chewing gum, a final relic of Prague, to the windshield. He leaps back to the train just as the ensuing explosion kills Krieger and Jim is crushed in between the copter remains and the tracks.

Now with custody of the NOC list, Max, and Job's true identity, Kittridge reinstates Luther and Ethan as IMF agents. He also drops his investigation against Ethan, who resigns from the IMF. As he flies home, a flight attendant approaches him and asks, through a coded phrase, if he is ready to take on a new mission.

Read more