At least they tried?

Rating: 5/10 (20 May 2006)

What a funny film. For one thing, when you've got Ving Rhames asking Tom Cruise, "so did you sleep with your little sister," one can't help but like the filmmakers are playing some weird games with the whole Cruise/Holmes unpleasantness (for the record, Cruise never answers the question). There are a whole host of problems with this film, most of which revolve around the notion that Cruise is primarily motivated by these two women whom we hardly ever see on screen, and in the case of the more clearly romantic relationship, what we do see inspires little more than a feeling that it'd be better if we got back to the action.
And yet maybe the "motivation" bit worked as well as it was supposed to, because after some long stretches of boredom in the first half, I found myself a bit more caught up the closer we got to the end. I don't really know if that was because of the story, or just because the setpieces were more exciting. What I did find fascinating was that someone thought you could actually wring some suspense from "will Tom Cruise be successfully resuscitated?" I mean, seriously guys? Of course, one can always hope to be proved wrong!