'The Mummy' A Review

The Mummy is an action-adventure movie, a reboot of the franchise begun in 1932 with the Universal Monsters series. Nick(Tom Cruise) is a US soldier/mercenary(unclear) who is an antiquities thief while on missions(?). He enters an insurgent camp believing it to be above an ancient tomb then calls in an airstrike(??) which in inadvertently opens up the tomb entrance. Within the tomb Nick, his sidekick Chris(Jake Johnson), and scholar Jennifer(Annabelle Wallis) uncover and inadvertently free the long imprisoned Princess Ahmanet(Sofia Boutella). Hell quickly breaks loose!

Cruise is efficient as he always is but the script makes early and numerous mistakes in regards to character. It's not so much that Cruise does a bad job with the role more that the role is so bizarre and illogical that no actor could pull it off. Johnson's typical low-key deadpan is such a way it doesn't work and seems to belong in a different movie. Wallis is fine but isn't given much to do aside from go through an unbelievable "romantic" arc with the Cruise character and eventually be saved. Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll(???) is good I guess but makes you wonder why the hell he's in this movie. Much if not all of the character machinations make no sense. Boutella is the one bright spot as the titular Mummy but her role is sacrificed for exposition and character introduction in order to set up the "Dark Universe" or whatever.

Visually the movie is very cool. The action all works and is exciting, the costumes are fun, the flashbacks and ruins all work perfectly to set the tone. The story that should inhabit the production however never seem to manifest.

Borderline incoherent despite the efforts of talented production and cast.

Don't See It.