Rating (1.5 out of 5)
The question you may ask, is “John why would you watch this movie?” The answer is 2 fold: 1) I always hope for the best in movies and maybe they nugget in the movie for me, even if it isn’t the best film 2) how can you possibly mess up a mummy movie.
After watching this, so called film, I have come to the conclusion it is very easy to mess up a mummy film. The other observation I have is Tom Cruise can’t carry a film by himself, and lacks a levity to pull off this type of role.
As we tell our children, “do as I say, not as I do” and don’t watch this movie.
Plot: A young female daughter of the pharoh, Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) will never become ruler of Egypt. In her tantrum, she sides with Set (the Eqyptian Devil) and becomes the Mummy. She kills her step mom, 1/2 brother and the pharoh. She is about to release Set through a “Chosen” man, but is stopped and buried alive far from Egypt. In modern times, treasure hunter and military scout, Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) and his side kick, Sgt. Vail (Jake Johnson), steal from Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), an archaeologist, and locate the mummy’s tomb in Iraq. They find the mummy’s sarcophagus and in returning to London, they end up releasing the Mummy. Nick has now become the Chosen one and they must stop the Mummy before Nick is sacrificed.
Honest I tried to make the plot as simple as possible.
What I Did Like: Had this been a broken into pieces and turned into a TV show, I could see the potential for all the story lines. This would be a great JJ Abrams series.
What I Didn’t Like: As you can see from the plot there is too much going on with the film, and I skipped over parts in my plot simplification. This movie suffers from lack of focus and clear concise story telling. This is written like it is the introduction to a tv series and we are setting up the next 23 episodes and season 2.
Sgt. Vail is only in the movie a little bit. When he is on screen there is a little bit of humor. However, even that humor is not well delivered. Tom Cruise tries a few one liners, but he doesn’t have that knack comedy, he swings and misses. There just wasn’t any humor or campiness to this film, that would make it fun. It lacked the Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg of Mission Impossible.
The Mummy at times seemed weak then at other times seemed unstoppable. For example, she easily blew out all the windows in London. That was cool, since glass is basically sand, that part flowed well with the Mummy theme. She controlled the zombies and dead people, but she is easily stopped by the “organization”, headed by Russel Crowe, with cross bows. The writing of her strengths and weakness was a huge flaw in the movie.
The Jekyll and Hyde dynamic established with Russel Crowe character was just unnecessary. I have said it before, and I will say it again, you can’t have two bad guys. You have to have one clear bad guy. If there is another person who is bad, they must repent and join the good team. This never happens with the organization that Crowe leads. When everyone is the bad guy, it just gets tiring and confusing.
The character Jenny is one of the most pathetic female characters I have seen in a while. Outside of the fight scene of the Jekyll and Hyde, she is just pulled around and saved by Nick. So for example, in the tomb, Jenny should have found out how to get the Mummy out of the liquid. But no we have to rely on the big strong man.
Conclusion: What a shambles of a movie. An uncharismatic lead, a weak female lead, and confusing mummy, etc. Take a risk on a Netflix made movie rather than this.