This review may contain spoilers.
Got the 4K disc a few days early so watched this in chunks. The things I liked from my first viewing held up, but it also didn’t change my mind about what’s not working for me. Each of the film’s sections mostly works, but the overall pacing is just…off, with way more exposition than we need.
The Entity remixing Ethan’s past to manipulate him is interesting, and more evident to me this time around—the Venice segment dredges up the trauma of Ethan losing his team in the first movie, the ending calls back to the TGV. I’m still annoyed at Ilsa’s death though—what a rotten way to send off a character for cheap emotional stakes.
When things work, though, it’s a lot of fun: Ilsa flipping the eyepatch down [fans self] and picking off riders is so badass. The Rome car chase is just goofy, escalating chaos—Ethan walking away with the steering wheel cracked me up all over again. I get the heights real bad, and my hands got genuinely sweaty during the train sequence. I liked the return of magic nerd Ethan and all the pickpocket hijinks.
Curiously, though, the most hyped stunt (the motorcycle jump) felt underwhelming, probably because of the way it’s edited. (And I hadn’t seen it until I first saw the movie, so it’s not like I was saturated with the pre-release stunt promos.)
Latest ranking 1 > 5 > 4 = 6 > 7 > 2 = 3