Missing a center

Rating: 6/10 (18 May 2006)

See Tom Cruise crawl through the catacombs. See Tom Cruise cling to the ruins of the Cheasapeake Bay Bridge. See Tom Cruise run through the streets of Shanghai. Beautiful visuals, gripping action, but something seemed to me to be slightly off-kilter throughout the movie. Maybe it has do to with the fact that save for a 30 second microchip, the most interesting heroic character dies at the end of the first reel. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Ving Rhaymes and Jonathan Rhy Meyers are far more interesting than "Ethan Hunt" yet have fairly little to do in this movie. Maybe its the fact that you can smell the big plot twist coming. Maybe its the fact Phillip Seymour Hoffman is so far more compelling on screen than Tom Cruise that I actually started to root for the bad guys. Maybe the writers should remember that in an action movie, propelled from scene to scene by pyrotechnics, we need to have people we care about. Maybe its the fact that they never explained what was at stake, or why we should care. Or maybe its just that this would have been a more interesting movie without Tom Cruise.