Woo takes it up the --- from Cruise

Rating: 6/10 (26 November 2009)

Powerfully lousy film-making. Lets see now, most good action films justify the pretext for the ensuing violence very well. Or they have some decent drama & emotion to prop up the action. Die Hard, T2, Speed, Point Break, The Rock are some examples that follow this basic template the best. And as such these are great, if empty, pieces of entertainment. You don't HAVE to be a teenager to enjoy these films.
This film essentially has no organizing principle whatsoever. Cruise has hijacked the entire production. His "ghost-direction" is painfully obvious and proves to be the death knell for the film (and Woo). The whole thing is in thrall to his infantile pretty-boy narcissism (ugh!). The man STILL cant get over his looks. Cruise is *not* an authentic human being with genuine emotional response. You'll notice he has this weird thing going on in his films where his real life & thoughts creepily show up in whatever role he may be doing at the moment (Jerry Maguire, this, MI-3). And it usually has to do with his attitude to women. He turns into this psycho creep around them. His scenes in 'Lions for Lambs' with Meryl Streep made my skin curl. Oh, the horror.
No more unkind words are left to heap on the hideous Mr. Tom Cruise. He's a madman, we all know that. You, dear reader, may be wondering why I'm wasting my time on such a wearying dud. I read Roger Ebert's review after watching this film last night, and it made me re-evaluate my perception of the man. The only way to make sense of that review of his is to look at it as some kind of Kaufmann-esqe parody where he's laughing at the viewer/reader. He uses some obfuscating, post-doctoral Derrida-speak to describe what is quite obviously a very bad movie. Surprisingly, for once IMDb gives this a pretty sane (though still very high) rating of 5.6/10.
Marketing blitzkrieg saved this stillborn project. No wonder Paramount got fed up of Cruise. The guy is an egomaniac, and a no-talent to boot.