Intellectual? Oh, please! I think not.

Rating: 6/10 (10 January 2002)

Gimmicks are not plot. Confused, repetitious images are not keen character development, and certainly not genius. All the techno-crap and time-jumping were really unnecessary,and the heavy-handed clues throughout were tiresome. This pic could have stood more editing - by about fifteen minutes.
But I digress: Tom Cruise is my subject, and the reason I went to see the picture. (And how they sold it. This is a STAR VEHICLE, get it?)
Now:is there anyone who likes Tom Cruise unreservedly? Or is that guy working all the angles behind that golden smile visible to everyone?
Until "Vanilla Sky" I liked Tom Cruise - but with provisos. Now I must admit: he CAN act (though his range is small) and (to his credit)he was willing to take a chance of losing his audience by hiding that fabulous Star-Face for so much of this unhappy story.
The audience filed out as if unconscious before the credits started to roll, and I admit I suffered the same malaise. It was nothing so clear as "I don't like it."
The uneasy feeling stayed with me. In fact, it took me several hours to realize that I simply don't LIKE seeing Tom Cruise as a loser. Life is complicated enough. I was to see a jaunty happy hero, the place wherein all his attraction lies. (And I'm not a kid; the heroes of my twenties have been dying off for about five years from natural causes.)
When I go to see Tom Cruise I want him to be the Tom Cruise climbing the sheer rock face at the beginning of "Mission Impossible 2".

He doesn't need to show me he can act.
He doesn't have to.
He can just smile and win. I won't mind at all.