Why there was so much raving about this movie? It's pathetic!

Rating: 3/10 (1 June 2012)

The only positive comment I have to make regarding this film is the cinematography. Kubrick was basically a photographer, and you can see that in every film he directed: angles, tracking shots, composition, symmetry, editing... He, Hitchcock, Welles, Murnau and Dreyer are the greatest visual masters of all time.
But what was Kubrick thinking of when he made this piece of rubbish?!!... How could he say this was his "greatest work ever"? What happened to the man who made beautiful masterly films like "The Killing" "Paths of Glory", "Dr. Strangelove", "A Clockwork Orange", "Barry Lyndon and "The Shining"? He must have been going senile when he made this pretentious piece of crap and called it his ultimate masterpiece!
Was it necessary to make a two-and-a-half hour movie to tell a dull story that could be compressed in ninety minutes or even less? What a waste of celluloid!
And couldn't he have possibly found a better leading actor?!! Dear god, Cruise is a dull moron who can't act at all but flashes his smile and touches his hair every minute and looks this way and the other while he says "you know, hum, yeah, honestly baby" all the time. A total bimbo-boy.
A totally much overrated movie that if it had been made in a low budget by a second-rate director it would have been slashed both by the critics and the public. And the director, crucified. It's a total shame that Kubrick's brilliant career had to end up in such a worthless way.