10 Genius Movie Moments That Came Out Of Nowhere
9. The Henchman Mask Reveal - Mission: Impossible II
You won't find many Mission: Impossible fans who will argue with the assertion that the second film is the dumbest entry in the franchise by a massive margin, for better or worse.
But there's a sure irony about the fact that the John Woo-directed Mission: Impossible II also features the single smartest and most effective "mask reveal" scene in the entire series.
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team using extremely lifelike face masks for infiltration purposes is one of the franchise's most consistent tropes, and it gets its best showing later on in Mission: Impossible II, when villain Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) seemingly guns down Ethan once and for all.
Except after executing "Ethan," Ambrose notices a wound on Hunt's finger, at which point he tugs at Ethan's face and pulls off a mask, revealing that he actually just murdered his own henchman, Hugh Stamp (Richard Roxburgh).
As Ambrose flies into a rage the real Ethan, who was mere feet away from Ambrose and wearing a mask of Stamp, runs off with the cure to the Chimera virus. Genius.
As much as Mission: Impossible II gets wrong - and it sure does get a lot wrong - this scene is a mini-masterpiece in its own right.