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Comic Review: Human Target: Final Cut »

A lot of people will want to see this movie for the novelty of Tom Cruise playing a bad guy for the first time, but with that trademark cocky leer of his, I thought he was always playing a bad guy. The real draw for me with this movie was the director, Michael Mann. The look of this film is pure Mann with night time drives through L.A. grooving to a pulsing soundtrack. It's like Miami Vice, redux.

I might have loved the film more if the ending didn't become so overblown and try to force a love interest into the mix. I also would have liked more verbal tete a tete between Cruise and Jamie Foxx (who is surprisingly great as the sad sack cabbie). The action pieces were much stronger than the conversations. Cruise has a couple of cool lines but I really wanted to see him get a little further under Foxx's skin, psychologically.
B+

Posted at August 10, 2004 1:57 PM

I went A minus. But I do agree that the ending should have been much better. Hard to believe that Cruise one second is running around with a neck wound, then sits down on subway car .. gives a short speech then just dies. And the final scene with Foxx and Jada just walking was not good.

Fox and Cruise both great and the cinematography was top notch.

Posted by: Mike at August 11, 2004 5:08 PM

Yeah, everyone that I saw it with was convinced that there would be a sequel because it seemed that Cruise wasn't really dead. I can't imagine this is a sequel type of movie.

Posted by: Rich Barrett at August 11, 2004 5:58 PM