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“Filming took place during the spring and summer of 1999 everywhere from Sydney Harbour and the Australian outback town of Broken Hill to Moab in Utah and the San Gabriel Mountains just outside Los Angeles, with each location becoming a spectacular backdrop for the many exciting stunt sequences that, in typical Woo balletic style, are bound to keep audiences on the edge of their seats. For example, Cruise and Scott go head-to-head in a daredevil motorcycle joust. There’s also an exciting car chase through mountainous terrain and a breathtaking cliff-climbing scene.
Above, the film’s female lead, Thandie Newton, who previously worked with Cruise on Interview With the Vampire. Opposite page, guys, good and bad: clockwise from top, Tom Cruise as agent Ethan Hunt; Rade Serbedzija as
Dr Nekhorvich; Brendan Gleeson as McCloy and Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell, the only character (apart from Cruise’s Hunt) to
have appeared in the
first Mission: Impossible.
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“I’d put it right up there with flying an F-14 and F-18,” says Cruise of the latter stunt. “It was fantastic, unbelievably exhilarating, and there were places where I had less than a width of my finger to hook onto. I really like excitement: I enjoy being scared. When people see the movie, they’ll think, ‘Oh, that must have hurt’. And they’re right! Sometimes I don’t have to act at all. The special-effects guys were nervous because they knew it could be dangerous, but they couldn’t say anything because I was the producer and I wanted the shot.””
“I really appreciated the fact that Tom wanted to do all his own stunts, but he really scared me sometimes,” admits Woo. “Of course, we had a terrific stunt team headed up by Brian Smrz, whom Tom had enormous confidence in, and they were very well prepared. But there was always the thought, ‘What if something goes wrong, what if a cable breaks’? I think the worst time for me was when Tom was hanging over the side of a cliff thousands of feet in the air with a helicopter almost touching him. He wouldn’t just do the stunt once either. He’d do it time and time again to get the grips and slips perfect. But Tom loves to have close contact with his audience. That’s why he does everything himself. He never wants them to be disappointed.”
And that’s one thing that M:I-2 is certainly not going to do as long as Tom Cruise has his way.
“Sure, there were people who said it was impossible,” he notes. “But that’s not what I like to hear. There are always challenges on a huge picture like M:I-2, yet they are always worth taking to deliver the best movie entertainment you can.”
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