The mummy
Cast: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance, Marwan Kenzari
Rated: 5/10
The Mummy is wrapped in so much tape that you get confused. Is it about zombiesIJ Or is it about the ancient Egyptian curseIJ Or is it about 12th century crusader’s burial site being found by a london underground projectIJ Or is it some modern-day abracadabra of containing evilIJ Or is it about Tom Cruise, the US soldier who spends time in Iraq stealing treasures for the black marketIJ There is a Mr Jekyll too thrown in to enhance this one from the newly stitched up “Dark Universe” banner of Universal Pictures.
Well, it is a mixture of all this and much more, ambitiously but foolishly trying to entrap too many stories into too less a space. The result is a jumble of immense maze from where you come out as jerky and nerdy as the 5000-year-old mummy herself.
Now this Mummy (played stunningly by Sofia Boutella) is evil and with “My Chosen One” is all set to dominate humanity in a heebie-jeebie way after being unearthed from modern-day Iraq in one of the bombings engineered by Cruise and his pal. By the way, the chosen one is none other than Cruise himself whose brains are systematically picked by the Mummy who used to be quite a princess in her earlier life, till of course, the pharaoh had a male child and she lost her bid to the title.
The past life story is more interesting than the modern-day entrapment it is given and that’s why this Mummy is all so taped up and jerky.
Come to think of it, Hollywood’s Mummies are made more for Brendon Fraser than for Tom Cruise, the latter looking good for missions more impossible than an Egyptian past life zombie story flitting between the sands of Mesopotamia, london underground and a tale that lacks the punch because of mash-ups of too many horror genres woven into one.