Cruise pumps up the aggro, no doubt, but he does it in such a gentlemanly and suave way that he can't help but win us over. It's a perfect concoction. Yes, the plot is pretty basic. Yes the villain is pretty obvious. Yes the script, by respectable hack Robert Towne, is pretty thin.
Newton provides the sexual chemistry of a smoldering ingenue with ease.
Woo endows frame after frame after frame after frame with visual magnificence. The combined effect is one of the most sexy and gorgeous summer blockbuster actioners ever to be released. And the music. Sure, whine if you must. But if you like your mega-movies with the cinematic gloss on overdrive, than this is the motherlode.