danigs007

I think most of the bad comments come from those who don't remember the difference between a flick one sees in the cinema and one that one would see on TV.

And this is the latter, and such a great one!

First and most important - the cast: Pierce Brosnan, just before his 007 stardom, plays a special agent (...) on a UN mission. He teams up with the ridiculously pretty Alexandra Paul (who was a huge TV star in Baywatch at the time). They work against the incredibly charismatic Ted Levine, playing an American mercenary who works with a Russian General, portrayed by Christopher Lee. Yes! You also get the great Christopher Lee in this TV film for the same ticket. And he's wonderful.

To complete this incredible cast, we have Patrick Stewart - a huge theatrical and TV star at the time (Star Trek, to name one), who was thought to be at his peak in 1993 only to later to become an even greater worldwide star as Professor X.

You don't get such a cast in many films, definitely not on TV. And they all did a great job on this film, in fact - so good that many of them became evermore successful later - playing similar roles.

Now the plot is pretty simplistic - but who cares? It makes sense, the drama is well played, the stunts are actually nice and much more than what one would get on television at the time, everything goes smoothly, the locations constantly vary, and eventually the audience gets two hours of a 4:3 format action film in the best possible way.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge's attempt to do a funny monologue of her fleabag character may sound promising.

However, it doesn't take more than a few minutes to realize that this is a a complete waste of time. The audience thinks so too, and sadly you can hear (and not hear) their poor reaction in the background.

At the bottom line, this show anything BUT funny.

Specifically, there are two major problems in this production:

First, her performance, as stunning as it is, constantly switches between being ridiculously vulgar to being even more ridiculously emotional. This could have worked once, but when the direction uses the same infantile approach over and over every single time, it is simply exhausting. Even unwatchable at times.

Secondly, the jokes, on, the jokes... They are either killed by bad timing, or presented dead already. If this was to be a comedy, she should have constructed the script in a way which would offer some breathing and laughing. Instead, we get a very tense hysterical speech, with "hidden" punch lines in it.

I give it 4/10 due to Waller Bridge's presentation the character which was compelling. Otherwise, a comedy which is not funny, and has more vulgarity than smiles is not worth more than 1/10.

Cruise is back, and he's almost as awesome as always.

First - the stunts are superb. Cruise took it upon himself to fill in the void that the Bond franchise left 20 something years ago (forgive me for not counting the Craig films) and he's doing an excellent job.

Second - don't look for intelligent dialogues, smart humor, or an interesting plot. This film's story is mostly coherent and that is enough. Especially when you have such shallow characters, which are mostly busy explaining to the audience how the action parts connect.

Third - although there were some nice talented additions to the cast, they were not really needed and felt like marketing stunts. Furthermore, one of the characters was artificially planted, and the plot twist which brought her in was really stupid and completely uncalled for.

Last but not least - The soundtrack was too much of everything: Far too loud, much too aggressive, and ridiculously melodramatic.

Altogether - 5.5/10. (I would have given a higher rank if the dialogue wasn't so infantile)