Three or four episodes of Hustle pasted together

Rating: 6/10 (22 January 2012)

This movie is a bit like the UK series Hustle, only with a big budget, international locations and quite a few episodes and climaxes strung together. I didn't really gel with the characters, they seemed out of my league in a way that other action heroes don't, and I didn't quite believe in what they were up to either.
It's the Cruise brand, it's like an empty battery that gets recharged with new characters around him. I prefer this team to the last unmemorable lot, but for all that you just think, well, there'll be another lot next time. The opener in a Serbian gaol seems to be Cruise auditioning for the Jack Rancher role, all bulked up and knocking out prisoners and guards and so on - convincingly it must be said. Simon Pegg is the boffin but a lot of the humour seems a bit inappropriate because the director doesn't know how to set up the expectation of humour, if feels a bit lame. Also, you can't help thinking that the team are chosen to not be taller than Cruise, at which they succeed.
To be fair, it is exciting and my palms were sweaty, yet it was also a hollow experience, not moving really.
The cinematography isn't too great or lovely to look at, and the Imax experience I can't really get the hang of, the screen goes deep when there's some big vista but it seems a bit tacky to me, plus it destroys the suspension of disbelief. Cruise doesn't have many layers as an actor and the crucial thing is you don't really quite believe any of it and I'm not sure you're supposed to but it's all mighty earnest. At times it's as if this is a Scientology movie: here is another seemingly insurmountable challenge that our hero can surely master before moving on to the next level of enlightenment.