I botched another chance to be with loved ones during this film, and so I'm done. The movie itself was the usual post 1990's over the top SFX stuff with a lot of plot and scenery.
Cruise plays the rogue intel officer who only does jobs he thinks are worth doing, and a rogue AI starts the film off with a disaster that tries to put fear into the audience.
The truth about AI is that it's only as smart as the hardware allows it. Ask any flying insect about where pollen is, and then ask it to explain its family history and you'll get a baffled look from the critter. The film assumes human like qualities from the electronic menace, which I suppose in theory is possible, but all programs require a power source and the hardware to support it. That's basic computer building 101.
Even so the film uses a lot of software references to push the plopt forward. In the old Connery era James Bond films the devices where there to give an ego boost to the Bond loving audience. See Bond outsmart the bad guys with his Aston Martin DB5 oil slick, or exploding briefcase. Here the software is both a helper and a menace, with some humans throwing in their two bits.
There's a lot of deceit and double backing and double and triple guessing on the part of the characters as to what to do. If there were a real AI that had "gone rogue", then like all bugged software you would see errors pop up. But we don't get that in this film. We get a lot of Cruise doing highly dynamic green screen work, a lot of martial arts from both men and women, and a good amount of gunplay and more than one car chase, all of which is capped off by a train sequence.
You know ... I came to dislike movies way back when I was a kid in the 70s, but could still enjoy them as mindless fun. This film kind of goes back to those James Bond, Man From Uncle, Mission Impossible, I Spy days of movie and TV yore. It's meant for a younger audience than myself, and designed to emotionally prepare said audience for the challenges of facing a possible nemesis that, again in theory, doesn't have any feelings but a sense of programmed purpose.
The film looks good, but with no linger cinematic moments. The sound was overly loud, the music was okay enough. And the tricks of the spy trade were fun and inventive.
If I had a criticism it was that the fight scenes are out of late night kung fu theatre from the 1980s and 1970s. During the 60s and 70s Taiwan a few other Asian nations film industries made lots of martial arts' films, and they got aired late at night on broadcast TV. All of the fights were perfectly choregraphed, and I felt like a teenager again with a slice of pizza and a can of coke watching the old tube TV at 1AM. But, it is a movie, and you can't take it too seriously.
I sat through the overly loud previews and Noovie promos before the actual movie, and figured that that was that. I really can't say too much more than what I stated in my opening paragraph. I really tried, but it was after all only a movie.
Cruise plays the rogue intel officer who only does jobs he thinks are worth doing, and a rogue AI starts the film off with a disaster that tries to put fear into the audience.
The truth about AI is that it's only as smart as the hardware allows it. Ask any flying insect about where pollen is, and then ask it to explain its family history and you'll get a baffled look from the critter. The film assumes human like qualities from the electronic menace, which I suppose in theory is possible, but all programs require a power source and the hardware to support it. That's basic computer building 101.
Even so the film uses a lot of software references to push the plopt forward. In the old Connery era James Bond films the devices where there to give an ego boost to the Bond loving audience. See Bond outsmart the bad guys with his Aston Martin DB5 oil slick, or exploding briefcase. Here the software is both a helper and a menace, with some humans throwing in their two bits.
There's a lot of deceit and double backing and double and triple guessing on the part of the characters as to what to do. If there were a real AI that had "gone rogue", then like all bugged software you would see errors pop up. But we don't get that in this film. We get a lot of Cruise doing highly dynamic green screen work, a lot of martial arts from both men and women, and a good amount of gunplay and more than one car chase, all of which is capped off by a train sequence.
You know ... I came to dislike movies way back when I was a kid in the 70s, but could still enjoy them as mindless fun. This film kind of goes back to those James Bond, Man From Uncle, Mission Impossible, I Spy days of movie and TV yore. It's meant for a younger audience than myself, and designed to emotionally prepare said audience for the challenges of facing a possible nemesis that, again in theory, doesn't have any feelings but a sense of programmed purpose.
The film looks good, but with no linger cinematic moments. The sound was overly loud, the music was okay enough. And the tricks of the spy trade were fun and inventive.
If I had a criticism it was that the fight scenes are out of late night kung fu theatre from the 1980s and 1970s. During the 60s and 70s Taiwan a few other Asian nations film industries made lots of martial arts' films, and they got aired late at night on broadcast TV. All of the fights were perfectly choregraphed, and I felt like a teenager again with a slice of pizza and a can of coke watching the old tube TV at 1AM. But, it is a movie, and you can't take it too seriously.
I sat through the overly loud previews and Noovie promos before the actual movie, and figured that that was that. I really can't say too much more than what I stated in my opening paragraph. I really tried, but it was after all only a movie.
Tell Your Friends