Film Review - The Mummy (2017)

The Mummy is the first film in Universal's Dark Universe and stars Tom Cruise as Nick a soldier in the Middle East who after a skirmish finds a mysterious artefact buried underneath the town they're in this arouses the interest of Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe) who summises that this might be the prison of the Egyptian princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) but alas she awakens and threatens to wreak havoc in order to bring her beloved Set back to life.

The Mummy is far from a bad film it does have some positive elements but it is also a pretty average one and a lot of that comes down to the direction by Alex Kurtzman here directing his first big film there's no real life in any of the scenes the camerawork never truly feels exciting and there's no real sense of a strong story and as a result the film comes across as very bland a lot of the time and also pretty boring with the endless jump scares that only ever work once.

It also doesn't help that Cruise is also really boring in this role but then the script gives him very little to work with and Cruise is at his best when he is the leader of the pack, the smartest man in the room and running a mile ahead of everyone else, Christopher McQuarrie (one of the screenwriters of this film ironically) understands this I feel and Rogue Nation the last Mission Impossible was really good and he was really good in it but here he's just playing a dullard and its a bad fit.

A very good fit however and the one bright spot of this entire film is Crowe as Dr. Jekyll every scene he's in really comes to life in his hands and it makes me want to see more of him in this role hopefully if this movie does well a solo film with his character will be on the cards as he certainly deserves it for without him this movie is a near complete bland fest that just made me want En Sabah Nur aka Apocalypse from the X-Men to show up and bring some life to the film outside of Crowe.

And so that was the Mummy and frankly rewatch X-Men Apocalypse instead as that is a fun Ancient Egyptian being destroyer film whereas this is very bland, 2 out of 5.