Mission: Impossible 2 (15), 123 minutes.

LESSONS learnt, and learnt well. Brian DePalma's po-faced Mission: Impossible was dark, dank, unnecessarily complex and covert, only begrudgingly turning itself into an action movie in late desperation. Too late.

Exit DePalma, enter the dragon, alias Hong Kong's John Woo, the kitsch thriller specialist who can bring eloquence to a motorbike stunt, turn gunfire into slow-motion ballet and make fluttering doves in flight the eighth wonder of the world.

Woo is unfussy but image-conscious, typically reducing Mission: Impossible 2's title to a logo-snappy M:I2: not a mathematical formula to be unravelled so much as a calling card to announce he means business, armed with a $200 million budget.

Tom Cruise is similarly up for it, judging by his new look: arms muscular, body toned and tanned, hair longer and ruffled, as if he has been working out to the action-hero manual. His rock-climbing exploits in the Utah desert, an opening sequence in James Bond tradition, would now tax old Arnie Schwarzen-egger and Sly Stallone, and how Cruise rubs it in, doing his own stunts.

The plot, scripted by Robert Towne, is newly lean; a simple tale of a former special agent turned baddie, Dougray Scott's Sean Ambrose, hatching plans for world domination involving the hijacking of a new lethal virus and selling it to the highest bidder.

Rock-climbing interrupted, agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) accepts the mission to put a stop to Ambrose's scheme, with the glamorous aid of jewel thief Nyah (a golden Thandie Newton) in another theft from the Bond handbook to thrillers. Nyah happens to be Ambrose's girlfriend, only adding to the animosity between him and Hunt.

Scott is a below-par bad guy, much like fellow Scot Robert Carlyle in last year's Bond caper, The World Is Not Enough, but such is Woo's mastery of punch-ups and car and motorbike chases that this is only a minor fault. Likewise Towne's script is somewhat tortuous, especially in the first half, but amid all Woo's visual flair, that weakness is swept away by the audacious, rapacious set pieces.

Above all, Mission: Impossible 2 is a triumph for Cruise, not least because he has successfully re-invented Hunt, dropping any attempts at depth in favour of surface impact. That luxury comes with his executive director status, but the change is definitely for the better.

Meanwhile, John Woo must surely direct the next Bond movie. Nobody could do it better.