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The action thriller "The Mummy," meant to be the Big Bang of Universal's new "Dark Universe" franchise, is something of a wet firecracker, more a corporate-driven branding exercise than a living, breathing movie of its own.
Russell Crowe's character (more about him later) sums up Universal's game in nine words: "Welcome to a new world of gods and monsters." The line, cribbed from James Whale's 1935 horror classic "Bride of Frankenstein," hints at the plans to bring all of Universal's monsters together in a multifilm arc, à la the Marvel and DC "universes." The studio has "Bride of Frankenstein" on deck for Valentine's Day 2019, with Javier Bardem as Frankenstein's monster, and an "Invisible Man" remake starring Johnny Depp waiting for a release date. Updates of "The Phantom of the Opera," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and other classics have also been mentioned.
But "The Mummy," a hodgepodge of action sequences and theme-park scares thrown out of balance by the overwhelming star power of Tom Cruise, is not a promising start.
Cruise plays military scout and soldier of fortune Nick Morton, riding through Iraq with his sidekick, Chris Vail (Jake Johnson), scouting out villages for enemy troops and any archaeological plunder they might be hiding. In one such village, they find themselves pinned by gunfire and are saved only by calling in an airstrike — which reveals a forgotten Egyptian crypt, a thousand miles from Egypt.
Top archaeologist Jennifer Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), who has a bickering love-hate thing going with the roguish Nick, flies in to help remove the sarcophagus buried in the crypt and load it on a cargo plane. Chris — now an undead killing machine thanks to an evil spider bite — and an attacking swarm of crows send the cargo plane into a tailspin. Nick, after giving Jennifer the only parachute, goes down with the plane. His survival isn't so much a miracle as a curse.
As Crowe's character, Dr. Henry Jekyll (yes, that Dr. Jekyll), reveals in the prologue, the Egyptian princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) was mummified and entombed after her plans at global domination were thwarted. Now awakened, she has chosen Nick to become the reincarnation of Set, the god of death, and complete her evil designs.
That's where Jekyll and his team of world-saving archaeologists, including Jennifer, come in: to brush back evil wherever it emerges. One assumes they'll be busy in future "Dark Universe" movies.
Director Alex Kurtzman ("People Like Us") stages some impressive action sequences, such as that cargo-plane crash (partly filmed on the infamous "vomit comet" to get the full zero-gravity effect) and Jekyll's efforts to keep his dark side at bay. The pacing, though, is rather stop-and-start, and his overuse of lens flare shows Kurtzman has been spending too much time with his mentor, J.J. Abrams.
The screenplay bears many fingerprints, with writing credit given to Cruise collaborators David Koepp ("War of the Worlds," "Mission: Impossible") and Christopher McQuarrie ("Jack Reacher," "Edge of Tomorrow"), along with Dylan Kussman — while Kurtzman shares story credit with Jon Spaihts and Jenny Lumet. That committee of writers came up with one cool idea: gender-flipping the story to make the mummy a woman and the "damsel" a guy. (Albeit a guy who calls an ancient monster a "chick in a box.")
Boutella, an Algerian-born ex-dancer who was a scene stealer in "Kingsman: The Secret Service" and "Star Trek Beyond," is chilling and seductive as Ahmanet, sucking the life out of hapless humans and turning them into her zombie shock troops.
Alas, casting Cruise as the morally compromised Nick knocks "The Mummy" out of whack. One might believe Cruise as the thrill-seeking love-'em-and-leave-'em cad when he's in serious-actor mode (e.g. "Rain Man," "Magnolia," "Jerry Maguire"). But action-star Cruise can't pull it off, so there's never a moment of doubt how it's all going to play out.
Between Cruise's presence and the table-setting for future monster movies, "The Mummy" doesn't contain enough surprises of its own. For a horror movie, especially one based on a classic, that may be the deadliest curse of all.
Twitter: @moviecricket —
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'The Mummy'
A gender-flipped remake of the classic monster movie, the first of a planned franchise, doesn't carry enough surprises.
Where • Theaters everywhere.
When • Opens Friday, June 9.
Rating • PG-13 for violence, action and scary images, and for some suggestive content and partial nudity.
Running time • 110 minutes.