A complete waste of your time

Rating: 2/10 (4 December 2004)

This movie is a contrivance from the word go that doesn't even try to end up at a destination of any meaning.
Two hours spent with Tom Cruise the psychopathic hit man of immeasurable skill who is killed in the end by his freaked out cab driver with no skill and no balls.
This flick barely stays together through the first half, the setup and killing of the jazz trumpeter in his club after hours being sketchy at best, but then the movie takes a dive after the FBI catches on as the bodies pile up, and Cruise then goes into a Chinese disco in Los Angeles to take out his fourth victim (an informant against Mexican drug dealers it would seem). There is no one on this planet who could lucidly explain even half of what transpires inside the club as Cruise shoves his way through the elbow-to-elbow crowded dance floor while appearing to be able to recognize every FBI agent inside and kill most of them even though you the viewer can't tell who is who nor imagine how anyone else could.
After exiting the club and reclaiming his cab driver outside by killing the LAPD detective who the cabbie thinks has rescued him from the evil Cruise, the cabbie freaks out and flips the cab. Cruise exits and runs off to make his next kill while the dazed and confused Cabbie is first helped by a cop then arrested when the cop discovers the body of Cruise's first victim in the open trunk.
But, as the cuffs are going on the cabbie, he peers into the back seat and sees the open laptop screen on which Cruise has the address and pictures of his victims. The final one is there and it is the attractive U.S. Attorney who the cabbie scored a date with just before Cruise got into his cab and began the nightmare hours earlier.
Now, besides the cabbie being dazed to near unconsciousness, the laptop is a good six feet away from him and the picture of his fantasy date is about two inches square
Even an alert eagle would have trouble seeing that.
The cabbie then fights off the cop, handcuffs him and takes off running with his gun to stop Tom Cruise from making his final kill of the evening.
You know how that comes out. Even the morons who this movie was apparently made for can figure that out.
Now why would Cruise be trying to kill the U.S. Attorney doing the prosecution? The sophisticated gang who hired Cruise (who appear to operate at a level beyond the Mexican government) couldn't figure out that the Federal government has more prosecutors?
It's amazing that this kind of money could be spent and a director like Michael Mann would be involved with a flick that had a script this lame. Every cast member and plot turn in this movie is as hollow as Tom Cruise's hit man psychopathic character.
You were warned.