Mission:Impossible 2 – Notorious
Mission Impossible 2 is practically the antithesis of an original film. The film borrows heavily from Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious – to the degree that it might as well be labeled an action remake of the spy thriller. In fact, Anthony Hopkins’ speech to Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is almost verbatim the same speech that Louis Calhern delivers to Cary Grant’s equally reticent agent Devlin, telling him to use his girlfriend’s previous connection to a violent criminal in order to get to the baddies.
The second half of the film incorporates Notorious’s plot of the female lead entrapping the villain through the cunning use of sex, while her spy boyfriend watches and seethes from afar. And the similarities don’t end there: the horse-racing sequence in M:I 2 comes straight out of Notorious, as does the attempt to poison the leading lady.
All that Notorious was missing was that damned motorcycle joust.