Cruise in cab rhymes with snooze 'n gab

Rating: Null/10 (6 August 2004)

This will probably be one of the shortest reviews I've ever written, mainly because I walked out of the film after 45 minutes. I spent about a half-hour dozing off, put to sleep by the soporific script. The only reason I stayed another 15 minutes was to finish my Coke.
Granted, the photography is great, and so is the music, if you like jazz. But the opening sequence is nothing but interminable chatter, and when the real action starts, none of it seems to make very much sense.
Jamie Foxx and Mark Ruffalo don't exactly help to liven up the proceedings, but Cruise is the real problem with the film. For one thing, he's too impossibly clean-cut, well-tailored and soft-spoken to be credible as a thug. And that face -- that eternally boyish face. Even at 40, Cruise has the air of a kid who is still waiting for his beard to grow, his voice to break, and his Adam's apple to emerge. He doesn't look remotely like a hood. Not even a boy in the 'hood. A boy in a hoodie, perhaps.
Do yourself a favor. Give this L.A. cab a miss, and save yourself the fare. Don;t even rent the DVD. In this case, the letters stand for "dreadfully vapid and dull".
It's enough to make Travis Bickell weep.