A normal
woman gets entangled in the crazy life of a super spy.
This movie
was nailed down by critics and performed very poorly at the box office; it was
the worst opening for Tom Cruise in the last twenty years. After watching it on
DVD I must say that I think that this reputation is unreserved.
Maybe the
main problem was that the premise is too meta. The whole point of the movie is
how the wacky antics of the stereotypical action movie protagonist would look
from the point of view of the poor damsel in distress. It’s very hard to convey
this trough the usual channels, going into the movie I had no idea, but the
critics chorus of “It doesn’t make any sense! It’s too illogical” is disconcerting;
they watch a movie like this one and point at plot holes? It’s like complaining
that James Bond is the only spy who goes around telling is real name to everybody.
It misses the point, completely.
It
certainly is not perfect, not at all. The script went through nine official rewrites
and changed completely tone at least three times and it’s easy to spot dreg and
bits that clearly hails from previous iterations but overall it works, maybe
because action movie plot are often messy and confused and so it doesn’t look
out of place in its own genre.
There are a
couple of nice stunts and action sequences, again nothing mind blowing just
nicely done.
Tom Cruise practically
plays his movie persona and he is still clearly believable doing it. Cameron
Diaz got the hardest part, the script requires her to whine a lot about
everything, but she manages to deliver the tricky mix of suburban life and
action girl in potential.
Overall it’s
a really enjoyable experience, good for a relaxing evening.
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