MINORITY REPORT

year: 2002
rating: *1/2

Looking as if filmed with a lens splattered with icky green goo, MINORITY REPORT takes us into yet another Philip K. Dick future where the government does what seems the best for society (preventing murder) but is actually... no good at all...

The entire set-up is preposterous: Like MACBETH had three witches igniting the plot, there's a trio of half-naked bald people (one a hot chick) in a large tub of liquid within a formidable police station, projecting images of murders that haven't yet happened while Tom Cruise arrests the semi-guiltys and is soon enough... like the Film Noir/Wrong Man movies that inspired Steven Spielberg to try replicating (pun intended) the Neo Noir magic of BLADE RUNNER... framed for almost-murder and chased down like the criminals he used to... chase down: But the over abundance of now dated CGI, and the fact no characters have any chemistry with each other or the altered-reality world in which they reluctantly and awkwardly exist, makes MINORITY REPORT a tedious, tiresome waste of noisy bedlam.

COLLATERAL

title: COLLATERAL

year: 2002

cast: Tom Cruise, Jamie Fox

director: Michael Mann

rating: **1/2

Not really a fan of Jamie Fox, sometimes a Tom Cruise fan and haven't liked a Michael Mann flick in ages (and despised "Heat"), so I didn't think I'd enjoy this movie but I really dug the first hour. Tom Cruise, with a frosted buzz and robotically-adaptive intensity (he hasn't been this good in ages) is Vincent, a hit man who hires a dreamer cabbie Max (Fox) to drive him to each of his kills... with a gun to his head Max complies on this odyssey and it's a skillfully-paced cat-and-mouse game until half-way through when things morph into a typical big-budget high-octane "pumping action thriller" with an stunningly unrealistic shootout in a crowded rave-nightclub and a drawn-out climax involving Vincent (who, at this point, has become Freddy Kruger) going after Max's dreamgirl. It's a damn shame. Things were genuinely amazing for that first hour, providing a laidback, dialog-driven, psychologically-intense neo-noir mob flick by Michael Mann who, I guess, felt he had to channel Michael Bay to drive things home... And it takes a long time to get there.

THE FIRM

title: THE FIRM

year: 1993

cast: Tom Cruise, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Wilford Brimley, Hal Holbrook, Gary Busey, David Strathaim, Holly Hunter, Jerry Hardin, Steven Hill, Ed Harris, Paul Calderan, Tobin Bell, Terry Kinney, Paul Sorvino

rating: ***

Tom Cruise is the best fighter pilot. Tom Cruise is the best bartender. So why not be the best lawyer (actually, one person got a higher score on the bar exam, but he probably cheated). This film, directed by Sydney Pollock and based on yet another dolphin-lawyer-swimming-in-shark-filled-water book by John Grisham, is stylistic, classy, and perfectly vapid. Cruise, straight out of Harvard (yet he had to work hard to make it through, and, like all of Cruise's characters, has a troubled past he must make up for), gets a lucritive job at a firm that not only caters to the mob, but is part of their own crime syndicate. After he and wife Jeanne Tripplehorn (in an effective performance aimed at opening night audiences) are given a new house, a new car, and a great new paycheck, Cruise, after realizing the firm's corruptness, slowly figures out a loophole to beat them at their own game. What he does to strike back is confusing and would probably take a lawyer to understand (or someone who read the book), but it doesn't matter. Fun is fun, and this movie, if taken too seriously, could be thoroughly despised. Especially if you ask certain questions: Why would the firm's lead hitman be over six feet tall with shockingly blonde hair and albino eyes (Tobin Bell) i.e. easy to remember? Or why is Cruise's character able to do acrobatic sommersaults (in perhaps one of the silliest moments in film history)? So just give in to this handsomely filmed lightweight thriller with a straight-through piano score and some great actors dumbing down for the sake of being in a Tom Cruise blockbuster. Gene Hackman, as Cruise's personal mentor... a charming, womanizing lawyer who loves the vacationing aspect of his job... David Strathaim, as Cruise's glibly laidback jailbird brother... Terry Kinney, as a seemingly innocent lawyer who initially puts Cruise at ease... And Gary Busey as a fast talking private eye help elevate things: at least for as long as they're on screen. But the show belongs to Cruise, who, as usual, delivers this pizza with tons of cheese and, unless you're expecting steak or caviar, it'll fill you up as needed.

VALKYRIE

year: 2009

rating: **

Okay, Tom Cruise is... Tom Cruise. That's it. Gone are the days of "Taps" when he could actually be another person, a character PLAYED BY Tom Cruise not TOM CRUISE as himself AS another character. This film is no different. He's Tom Cruise playing a guy who wants to overthrow Hitler. Now the intentions of this man (based on real life) and his comrades, all part of the Nazi party, in this film are to rid the world of Hitler to save lives, but historically they wanted to save Germany and Socialism (their brand of it anyway) and not LOSE the war but instead to END IT with their party intact (without being run by a madman). It's okay to turn these fellows into superheroes because killing Adolph would have been a super-duper thing... and director Bryan Singer has made a great superhero film (XMAN) and a really bad one (SUPERMAN RETURNS) so he can't be blamed for over-the-top heroics, right? A lot of the time, though, the modernized high-octane action just doesn't fit this film, which tries to be a "suspense packed with everything".

TROPIC THUNDER

title: TROPIC THUNDER

year: 2008

cast: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Cruise, Jack Black, Nick Nolte

rating: *

"The Three Amigos" centers on three dim-bulb actors who go to Mexico thinking they're filming a movie and end up in a real situation battling bad guys who want to kill them. "Tropic Thunder" centers on three dim-bulb actors who think they're filming a movie and end up... doing "Three Amigos" all over again, but very badly. This could have been an at least halfway decent bad movie if there wasn't the sidestory about Ben Stiller's character's fading career, which makes it horrificly horribly awful. Ben Stiller goes over the top and isn't funny, Jack Black is totally wasted, and Robert Downey Jr. as a pretentious Australian actor playing a black army officer is somewhat impressive but gets annoying, fast.