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redfiona99A link to the Fin-gore trope on TVtropes. Which annoyingly doesn't include this scene. This may be rectified later.
Slightly off the usual format.
As well as spoilers for Mission Impossible 2, there are also spoilers for Thunderball and North by North West.
The case for the prosecution:
MI2 is a mess. Overblown, forever getting in its own way. I have never actually managed to watch it all the way to the end. If *I* think your fight scenes are too stylised, you have achieved the practically impossible. Boring me with a motorcycle chase may be even more difficult, but the film manages this as well.
The best thing aboout this film is that the production over-ran so we got Hugh Jackman as Wolverine!
The scene itself:
One of the qualifying criteria for a scene in this series is that, if I see that the film is on TV, I try to figure out how far through it is, and whether its past *the* scene I'm interested in, and if it's not, I think the scene is worth trying to catch, no matter how bad the rest of the film is.
This is definitely one of those.
Why the scene is so good: I don't know. It's frustrating. I cannot figure out why I like this scene.
Possibly because they play off a couple of spy thriller archetypes. The sexless villain's sidekick is a tradition, at least as far back as Thunderball, and Vargas, "Vargas does not drink, does not smoke, does not make love. What do you *do*, Vargas?".
The villain's sidekick who is pining for him, also a tradition, again, at least as far back as North By North West, and of course, in North by North West part of the reason the villain doesn't believe Leonard when he says Eve is up to something is that he thinks it's jealousy. Because it is partly, mostly, but he's also right.
And Hugh Stamp combines both of those, plus competence and ruthlessness (and is played by Richard Roxburgh, which ... listen, I know).
Meanwhile, Sean Ambrose is horrible and violent and on to Nyah (which is the the twist to the traditional way this plot works) even if he's not on to all of what Nyah is up to, and Dougray Scott can play the hell out of villains.
It's a scene that does a lot of setting up, that Ambrose is every bit as dangerous as we've been led to believe by the opening plane stunt, that he is good enough at what he does to get one over on both Stamp and Nyah, that he knows about Nyah and is planning on using her if necessary (even if she then does something he couldn't forsee because Sean Ambrose does not understand selflessness), and is a violent sociopath who chops the tops of people's fingers off (setting up the ending, which I know parts of despite never having seen it all the way through).
And that for some reason, Stamp is devoted enough to 1) get really jealous, 2) not mind the finger slicing, 3) be completely right about Nyah and not walk out on Ambrose despite the opportunity.
And yes, I have other no-good bad reasons for liking the scene which we will put under "not all my kinks are narrative", but this is one of 3 good scenes in the film (Rade Serbedzija is in the other two, Richard Roxburgh is in all of them, in their defences Dougray Scott and Tom Cruise are in the other two).
Slightly off the usual format.
As well as spoilers for Mission Impossible 2, there are also spoilers for Thunderball and North by North West.
The case for the prosecution:
MI2 is a mess. Overblown, forever getting in its own way. I have never actually managed to watch it all the way to the end. If *I* think your fight scenes are too stylised, you have achieved the practically impossible. Boring me with a motorcycle chase may be even more difficult, but the film manages this as well.
The best thing aboout this film is that the production over-ran so we got Hugh Jackman as Wolverine!
The scene itself:
One of the qualifying criteria for a scene in this series is that, if I see that the film is on TV, I try to figure out how far through it is, and whether its past *the* scene I'm interested in, and if it's not, I think the scene is worth trying to catch, no matter how bad the rest of the film is.
This is definitely one of those.
Why the scene is so good: I don't know. It's frustrating. I cannot figure out why I like this scene.
Possibly because they play off a couple of spy thriller archetypes. The sexless villain's sidekick is a tradition, at least as far back as Thunderball, and Vargas, "Vargas does not drink, does not smoke, does not make love. What do you *do*, Vargas?".
The villain's sidekick who is pining for him, also a tradition, again, at least as far back as North By North West, and of course, in North by North West part of the reason the villain doesn't believe Leonard when he says Eve is up to something is that he thinks it's jealousy. Because it is partly, mostly, but he's also right.
And Hugh Stamp combines both of those, plus competence and ruthlessness (and is played by Richard Roxburgh, which ... listen, I know).
Meanwhile, Sean Ambrose is horrible and violent and on to Nyah (which is the the twist to the traditional way this plot works) even if he's not on to all of what Nyah is up to, and Dougray Scott can play the hell out of villains.
It's a scene that does a lot of setting up, that Ambrose is every bit as dangerous as we've been led to believe by the opening plane stunt, that he is good enough at what he does to get one over on both Stamp and Nyah, that he knows about Nyah and is planning on using her if necessary (even if she then does something he couldn't forsee because Sean Ambrose does not understand selflessness), and is a violent sociopath who chops the tops of people's fingers off (setting up the ending, which I know parts of despite never having seen it all the way through).
And that for some reason, Stamp is devoted enough to 1) get really jealous, 2) not mind the finger slicing, 3) be completely right about Nyah and not walk out on Ambrose despite the opportunity.
And yes, I have other no-good bad reasons for liking the scene which we will put under "not all my kinks are narrative", but this is one of 3 good scenes in the film (Rade Serbedzija is in the other two, Richard Roxburgh is in all of them, in their defences Dougray Scott and Tom Cruise are in the other two).
