America's favorite Scientologist achieves High Score in video game

Rating: 6/10 (27 December 2017)

Tom Cruise gets to storm the beaches of WWII France as Player 2 in a first-person-shooter video game. Except the teenage boys who buy all the movie tickets don't think of Germans as the enemy, so we have aliens setting up shop in modern-day France and threatening Earth's good guys.
At first, Cruise doesn't know how his game controller (aka personal weapon system) works. He doesn't have the slightest idea of which moves to make and he gets killed before he's racked up too many points.
Luckily, this isn't a realistic war movie, it's a video game. So Player 2 gets to start over. He zips through the preliminary stages and this time tallies a few more points before he gets killed.
During one of these game-lives he meets Player 1 just before they're both killed. Before they hit Play Again, Player 1 has her friend explain to Player 2 (and us) what the objective of the game is so that he's not just pressing random buttons and getting killed too early in the game. Player 1 then teaches Player 2 her best moves. In turn, Player 2 teaches Player 1 his best strategy.
They get better and better at it each time until they're both racking up the points and they get past Stage 1.
And on it goes until they get to the final stage.
There's nothing original in this extravaganza of noise and flashing lights. But as a video game with a bunch of Hollywood cliches tacked on, a $200M budget, and a superstar as Player 2, it's a reasonably entertaining, if immediately forgettable, diversion for a couple of hours. I wouldn't play it a second time.