More minority opinions

Rating: 4/10 (27 June 2002)

Warning: commerical placement spoilers.
I am not a big fan of Tom Cruise, and got dragged into seeing this movie by a friend. 2+ hours later, I came out disappointed. The movie was like a giant souless commercial vehicle with endless product placements (bvlgari, lexus, some cigs?, cruise himself). The plot was OK, with enough twists and turns that you did not feel you could predict what happens next. The problem for me was that I did not care for any of the characters. Cruise was a classic cop with an edge (caused by some troubles long time ago). He wore the usual expression of righteous anger/self confidence through the entire movie, no other emotions ever escaped his face. Some minor characters were more interesting, his boss. But this is what I expected. What I was really hoping for were some cool special effects & chase scenes. There were 2 chase scenes, the memorable one with Cruise riding the guy with a jet-pack, another a common video-game chase. Not enough to keep me from closing my eyes often. Some special effects were nifty, such as animalistic plants. The entire movie was shot in a dull gray tone, that I found depressing. The fast action cuts so cool in Matrix (where Keanu runs super-fast) felt out of place here, since Cruise plays a non-cyborg. So, I did not care about the characters, chases, visuals, which leaves one last chance for the rescue: babes. Sadly, there were none, and I was left grasping the imaginary fast forward button most of the time.