Mummy, you’re not watching me – and neither should YOU. (Universal Pictures)
The latest big-budget blockbuster that should have stayed a B-movie, The Mummy has exactly one thing going for it: you get to see Tom Cruise viciously attacked by rats. Even better—those rats operate under the spell of an ancient Egyptian princess (Sofia Boutella of Kingsman: The Secret Service).
But even scrappy rodents powered by centuries of evil can’t save the movie from a terrible script, muddy cinematography, and mostly uninspired special effects.
It’s not a bad concept. Nick Morton (Cruise) is a generic (that name!), callow adventurer who dodges American operations in Iraq to seek the fabled tomb of Ahmanet (Boutella), whose dark powers were so strong that she was mummified alive and sentenced to be buried far from her Egyptian home with massive weights and the usual elaborate obstacle course preventing her from ever walking the Earth again.
Of course Tom Cruise solves the sarcophagal puzzle. After stealing a treasure map from generic heroine Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) in a post-coital fog, Morton finds his booty alright, and unwittingly releases a great evil into the world.
The Mummy is a lost opportunity, introducing an incredible subtext that the movie fails to bring to its logical conclusion: that Tom Cruise, perhaps even more than “Axel F,” may be the root of all evil.
Still, it’s not Cruise’s fault this doesn’t work. In his second feature, director Alex Kurtzman, who was last in charge of the Chris Pine vehicle People Like Us and wrote episodes of Star Trek:Discovery and the 2014 The Amazing Spider-Man 2, aims for some pretty standard action-movie beats but can’t hit any of them right.
A team of screenwriters that includes David Koepp (Carlito’s Way) and Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) has some good work behind them, but this over-embalmed and under-cooked product doesn’t just settle for the standard-issue redemption arc for its star; in case you didn’t catch the significance of an 11th-hour act of sacrifice, Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe—and yes, he’s that Henry Jekyll) explicitly tells you that Morton, or was it Norton, has redeemed himself.
This wouldn’t be a Tom Cruise movie if he didn’t run quickly away from things about to explode, but as may well be the case at the end of the world, the rats steal the show.
—
The Mummy
Directed by Alex Kurtzman
Written by David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, Dylan Kussman
With Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis, Russell Crowe
Rated PG-13 for violence, action and scary images, and for some suggestive content and partial nudity
110 minutes
Opens today at area theaters.
