Ugly virus released by Hollywood studio: US movie industry doomed

Rating: 1/10 (8 August 2009)

Complete silliness is nothing new on the silver screen, but complete silliness that involves more than 60 different stuntmen (I counted them on the credits) is getting decadent. Hugely overrated Hong-Kong director John Woo professes himself a Christian and star/producer Tom Cruise is a self-avowed "Scientologist" (whatever that is), so there's the usual hypocritical sexual morality pitted against indulgent bloody violence. The millions of children who will watch this film world-wide could validly conclude that violence is normal and sex non-existent. You would never know, by watching this lengthy stomp-romp, that half the movie audience is female, most of whom are turned off by violence and more interested in relationships. Apparently, Cruise made $75 million from this picture, which was so poor that Paramount fired him for it. That's decadent, too. But we're talking about a global movie industry in which dialogue is barely comprehensible (because it will only get dubbed anyway) and the story is only an excuse for 'action' of the sort that even chimpanzees will watch. A parting thought: the bad guy, played by Dougreay Scott, is trying to steal a whack of money and gets killed for it. Funny, because a big heist is what the good guy, Tom Cruise, pulled off when he made this picture. Funny old world, isn't it.