Cruise (who produced the film with his partner Paula Wagner) apparently wants each film in the franchise to have a different feel. The trouble is that "M:I-2" suffers in every way by comparison to the original. De Palma's "Mission: Impossible" had an autumnal, nearly abstract beauty and a sneaky, highly personal subtext. Within the guise of a spy story, De Palma made a film about what it means to be a talented pro at the mercy of dull, unimaginative corporate superiors. Hunt's government bosses, ready to brand him a traitor simply because he trusts his instincts above their regulations, were an espionage version of the studio bosses De Palma has had to justify himself to over the years. The movie was to him as "The Killer Elite" was to Sam Peckinpah. Unfortunately, the mediocrity he was dealing with extended to critics and audiences.

The most common complaint made about "Mission: Impossible" was that the plot made no sense. Actually, the plot made perfect sense (unlike the sequel, with its gaping holes) and was laid out clearly. The confusion came from the fact that it was laid out entirely in visual terms -- for instance, in the sequence where Cruise narrated a series of events to Jon Voight, but visualized them in an entirely different way, letting us know that he knew something Voight didn't know he knew. It was one thing for audiences to find that the movie went by too rapidly for them to process, but it was depressing to hear critics confessing their own inability to read a movie visually. Especially when one of the movie's themes, one of De Palma's recurring themes, is the deceptiveness of visual information.

There's nothing nearly as sophisticated as that going on in "M:I-2," and that would be OK if Woo had found some action-movie joie de vivre. But the film plods along mechanically, stopping dead whenever there's an exposition scene. (Particularly if it involves Scott, who acts with a glowering brow in the manner of young actors mistaking intensity for characterization.) Anthony Hopkins brings some life to an unbilled cameo as Hunt's boss, and though you'd have to work not to enjoy Ving Rhames, I wish his part consisted of more than noodling at computer keyboards. I got a kick out of seeing the terrific Irish actor Brendan Gleeson ("The General," "I Went Down") playing an English corporate smoothie, but he's wasted here.

The surprise of the movie (for me at least) is how enjoyable Cruise is. He had an action-figure athleticism in the first movie, and in the best scenes here, he has as well a sexiness that stops just short of slyness. Cruise may be too much an all-American type at heart to be a truly wily secret agent hero, and when he has to express sorrow at letting down a man whose life depended on him, he's still not convincing as an actor. But he's fun to watch and basically likable. His best move, though, may have been choosing Newton as a costar.

Cruise had to know he was making a statement by choosing a black leading lady; smartly, the movie doesn't even address it. (Which is the way we might finally see integrated couples treated as no big deal on the screen.) Newton, who was brilliant last year in Bernardo Bertolucci's "Besieged," is a just-about-perfect combination of strength and vulnerability. With a palpable edge in her line readings and a sense of revulsion never far beneath the surface of the masquerade she's playing, Newton has a slightly tremulous quality that humanizes the movie; when she's in danger a real person is at stake. "M:I-2" is a letdown in all sorts of ways, not least of which because it's such a routinely "spectacular" follow-up to such a distinctive hit. But the movie's sins pale next to its biggest one: that it can't provide a role worthy of this walking stunner.

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