2017’s “The Mummy”, directed by Alex Kurtzman.
Starring Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Sofia Boutella,
Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson, and Courtney B. Vance.
Some may remember 1999’s “The Mummy”, the Brandon Fraser
vehicle that featured hilariously bad CGI effects and some desert adventure
fun. In an attempt to jump on the multiverse bandwagon, Universal hired Tom
Cruise and revived the Mummy series to start the alleged “Dark Universe”
series, meaning that assuming the nearly $400 million in gross was enough, we
can strap in for plenty more alleged thrills and chills.
We start off in Mesopotamia (Iraq) where the freewheeling
jerk Cruise and his partner (Jake Johnson, not Katie Holmes) do something for
the army- we’re not sure what, but their superior (Vance) who wears army
camouflages, confirms employment when he yells at them for starting a casual
firefight with the locals. We also meet Annabelle Wallis, whom we believe is a
casual girlfriend/ archaeologist. We have this confirmed when she interrupts
Vance’s lecture to lecture Cruise about his commitment issues, and later when
she informs the audience that she is an archaeologist. The inconvenient
firefight that the insular Americans cause has it’s silver linings: a massive
crater in the landscape caused by an unrealistic air strike. An ancient tomb is
discovered, and is air lifted for transport away. However, the Mummy (Boutella)
has other plans, and in no time, Johnson and Cruise end up with dramatically
different perspectives in life and death, as they fight against the ravenous
Boutella and her zombie-like minions. Dr. Jekyll (Crowe) shows up to help here,
but he has his difficulties when his other half shows up.
Similar to the superior 2014’s “Live.Die.Repeat.", in that it’s a
lot of fun watching our favourite Scientologist Cruise get beaten up here. He
endures more than 1 vehicle crash, and gets assaulted by pretty much everything
on the planet by the time the credits roll. It remains remarkable the shape that
Cruise keeps his body in at his age, a type of special effect that’s better
than CGI. Focusing on Cruise’s physical prowess is a great way to ignore the
fact that it appears Cruise’s career may be in jeopardy. Cruise used to
actually act in movies, and has been fantastic in many. But he appears to be on
a track where we can now rely solely on Mission Impossible, Jack Reacher, and
now the Mummy franchises where we can watch him look great, add to the minutes
of sprinting footage that exist of him on the internet, and perform spectacular
stunts (and in an interesting trend, be ambivalent towards women). That’s all
fine and good, however, I wouldn’t mind more work such as 1989’s “Born on the
Fourth of July” or 1999’s “Magnolia”, or even 2008’s “Tropic Thunder”, where
Cruise really stretched himself to avoid dead weight such as 1994’s “Interview
with the Vampire”. Regardless of my predictions for dear Tom, a better question
to ask is: how many people does it take to write this screenplay? If you
answered 6, you know that’s too many, and it comes across. Featuring dialogue that
is the antithesis to any decent adventure film, it is overly wordy and is
constantly explaining to us what is going on. Featuring not a clue on how
relationships, organizations, or even humans work, it’s a relief when a
dream/fantasy sequence is shown sans dialogue. Hopefully when the next monster
is introduced, it won’t feel so embalmed.
1.5/5
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