Formerly Known As Cinema

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Tom Cruise’s latest cinematic doorstop has rather an unwieldy title for something that’s as simplistic as a picture book for preliterate two year olds.

Not to be a spoiler but the entire plot takes one very short sentence to describe and here it is: “Where’s the key?”

That’s it, I hope I’ve saved you twenty bucks.

Of course, it’s possible to create whole movies — even good ones — around stories just as assiduously uncomplicated. “Sisu”, a very entertaining Finnish action film from this year, could also be boiled down to one sentence: “Where’s my gold?”

The difference — other than that “Sisu” cost $7,000,000 and “Dead Reckoning” cost 57 times as much — is that, while both are purportedly thrillers, only “Sisu” has the essential innovation, imagination and, most importantly, genuine surprise to actually deliver the thrills.

With its myriad bonkers complications and breathless action sequences, “Sisu”, a 90-minute “revenge-o-matic” set in 1945 Lapland, races to the finish line with more twists and reversals in any ten minute chunk than “Dead Reckoning” has in its entire grossly bloated, nearly three-hour length.

The sad truth is that even with its hyped up foot (and car) chases, a runaway train and a motorcycle-sky-diving sequence — all accompanied by the wall-to-wall assault of Lorne Balfe’s ear-splitting score — “Dead Reckoning” is an enervating slog.

Like spending two hours and forty-five minutes on an exercise bike, we’re exhausted...but we haven’t gone anywhere.

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And the problems start right at the beginning, with a totally unnecessary pre-title sequence set on board a submarine.

It’s not just that we’ve been here before in much better underwater flicks — “The Abyss”, “Das Boot” and “Run Silent, Run Deep” to name but a few — or the fact that director/co-writer Christopher McQuarrie hasn’t found a way to make the well-trod territory even remotely fresh (his one ‘idea’ is to tilt the camera every now and then for no reason, as if we’re suddenly in The Penguin’s lair from the 60’s “Batman” TV show).

It’s that with this five minute sequence, McQuarrie entirely gives away the secret of the movie’s McGuffin — an overly-designed cruciform key that controls a rogue AI named, idiotically enough, “The Entity” — so that any possibility of surprise or discovery are effectively taken off the table.

Instead of a mission that involves the audience figuring out the details of the plot along with Tom Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt, we are handed the answer right away and spend the rest of the time waiting for Hunt to catch up. And he never does.

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Say what you will about the James Bond films, they at least have the good dramatic sense to keep the engine of the plot a secret from the audience: Bond gets a single clue and then has to travel the world to find all the other pieces of the puzzle.

“Dead Reckoning” just blurts out everything right up front. And then retells it again. And again. And again.

So much time is taken up with this and other tedious examples of needless exposition — all delivered in a flat, breathless whisper by the usually terrific (but here badly directed) Henry Czerny and Cary Elwes — that it borders on the absurd.

And without a discernible plot to follow, or mystery to solve, all we’re left with are the action beats, every one of which has been lifted from another movie.

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Recognize that desert sandstorm plot complication? You should, it’s from “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol”.

The bomb defusing scene? “Die Hard with a Vengeance”.

The train dangling off a cliff sequence? “Lost World: Jurassic Park Two”.

And that long, dull car chase through the crowded streets of Rome? Take your pick: It’s so derivative it could’ve come from a dozen better films.

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I’m not saying it’s bad to rip-off familiar set pieces: these days it’s practically expected. But at least elevate the known into something new or different. McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen don’t even try.

Luckily, McQuarrie directs his actors to intone their lines with such a degree of incongruous earnestness that “Dead Reckoning” is magically transformed from a mundane bore into delicious camp, providing a bumper crop of unintentional guffaws.

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In fact, hearing the various cast members repeat the phrase “The Entity” with absolute deadpan tenacity over and over again, is not only worth the price of admission, it makes for a darn good drinking game.

(Also, I know it’s a boomer movie reference, but am I the only one who thought of poor Barbara Hershey getting raped by the invisible demon in Sidney J. Furie’s 1982 horror flick, “The Entity” every time someone brought it up)?

And just what is this stupid Entity, this toothless threat that seems to change from scene to scene so we can never grasp exactly what all the fuss is about?

One moment it’s making a submarine shoot itself with torpedos, the next it seems to be in sleep mode with huge swaths of the film happening without so much as a peep.

For an all-seeing, all-knowing agent of chaos bent on destroying the world, he sure takes a lot of coffee breaks.

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And the human villains provide even less tension, though Vanessa Kirby and Esai Morales do answer the question of what would it look like if Boris and Natasha (from the Bullwinkle cartoons) wandered into a Bergman film.

Their scene on a train where they smile wanly at each other and murmur in hushed tones about all the evil they’re going to unleash on the world is so weirdly sincere it pushes the movie into a whole other dimension.

Tom Cruise is usually better when he underplays but here his acting is so charisma free, distracted and interior, he barely registers. (Although he does get points for allowing himself to be photographed so badly).

I will admit that for five minutes, while the passenger train was dangling off of a cliff, I was undeniably riveted. And even knowing it was a “Lost World” rip-off didn’t keep it from being among the most pulse-pounding five minutes I’ve experienced this year.

But there’s a lot of real estate on either side of it. And 160 plotless minutes involving one lumbering, seen-it-before action sequence after another is no way to spend the day at the movies.

Even with air conditioning and good popcorn.

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