Not a big surprise...

Rating: Null/10 (6 December 1999)

When I sat down in the movie theatre to watch this film I had a momentary vision. I roughly knew what the plot of this film was going to be. I knew the ending too. And I could guess the last line as well before Nicole's character says it. And now I feel like this film didn't do anything that hadn't been seen earlier. The only thing that kept me really in suspense was to see if Stanley in his old days was going to break down in front of the commercial power of the starring duo and simply be happy to make a film without ambition.
I hope that is the case since this film didn't live up to my expectations. I just didn't like the story. On the other hand one can defend the film by saying that everyone sees it differently and that many of Kubricks films draw their greatest strength from individual scenes and sometimes from individual images and that only time will tell if this is a good film.
Kubrick has shown a lot of versatility in his career but somehow I have the feeling that acting has always been the weakest link of his films and although not a total failure Cruise and Kidman only manage to annoy me. I suppose the theme is sexuality and the Cruise character is in a way caught in the middle of this spectrum of sexuality and everything that goes with it. Sounds interesting but basically falls short of a good script. I didn't enjoy the music that much either. But even so the film is definately not bad, it is probably one of this years best films on the big screen.