This is your mission, should you choose to accept it:

One of our agents just jumped sides, stole a very lethal virus and crashed a 747 into the Rocky Mountains. We need you get a good looking female thief (his former girlfriend) to find out where he is (you may have sex with before you tell her to go look for her ex) and bring the virus back to us. All right? This message will self destruct in 5 seconds (so you’d better read the rest of this review really fast).

John Woo delivers what he was born into this world to deliver: Pure hard core action. And he is bloody good at it, too. When you thought you had seen every action scene possible, this magician manages to think of something new and breathtaking. His action scenes usually break every physical law in the book, but what the heck - you don’t go to a John Woo movie to bother yourself with the details.

Unfortunately (I guess you did see that one comming), John Woo’s talent is not enough to make this a block buster. It lacks something. Tom Cruise is all right. At least, he’s got 3 faces (tough, tougher and so-tough-I’m-not-sure-I-can-keep-it-up) compared to the Keanu Reeves’ one face, the “I’m-a-bit-confused-at-the-moment”-face. And he is a first class actor, too.

But then again, Thandie Newton is not. Her British accent really gives me the creeps and her acting skills makes the hair on my back want to crawl into my spline and stay there. And she is not that good looking (not that looks has anything to do with it with my judgement of an actress. Hey, what are you two laughing at?). Better luck next time, Thandie - ‘cause I bet my left nut that we will see her again. Practice makes Master, or something like that.

Another thing that bothered me (not that it really mattered) was that only two songs from the MI-2 soundtrack was included in the movie. This soundtrack is the best movie soundtrack released so far this year and it’s a shame not to use more music from it. Also, the movie gets a bit repetitive at times. I mean, how many times can you use the mask-trick before it fails to suprise?

I say one time, not 4 times (or was it 5 times, I totally lost count).

Anyway, if you like mindless action with a tad story somewhere, you will like this movie. If you are (as one of my friends put it) a Kafka-fan you will not like this movie.