Inferior to the first movie in pretty much every way. It lost the spy theme of the original and while it has more action and explosions, they don't make up for it. The plot is stock standard, protagonist Ethan Hunt has to go and thwart antagonist, by retrieving what he had stolen. Add to that that the movie dedicates a significant amount of time to the relationship between Ethan and his love interest, Nyah, and it bogs the whole movie down. The first hour was slow, as mentioned, half of that it focused upon Ethan and Nyah when it doesn't add to the movie. We don't care about their superficial feelings, you almost wished that it would end at the one hour mark when Ethan goes into destroy stuff since you don't want to watch any more and it seemed like the right time. There were many elements where it was easy to guess what was going to happen. There are also too many slow motion scenes in which we get a super awesome handsome face shot of Tom Cruise in doing some acrobatics. A few times is okay but when we're constantly bombarded with that, it gets in your face. Mission: Impossible II is bloated, has pacing issues and doesn't have much going on for it.