"The Mummy" is a good, summertime flick with plenty of humour, sustained action, and entertaining fantasy. Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) and Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) are two mercenaries trapped by insurgents on a village rooftop in Iraq (originally called Mesopotamia). When Chris orders an airstrike, the bombs open up the ancient tomb of Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), an ambitious warrior who tried to kill her Pharaoh with a bejewelled dagger so that Set, the god of Death, could assume his fallen body. The Pharaoh's priests caught her committing the ritual act and mummified her alive then entombed her chained in a pool of mercury. Before Nick and Chris can loot the tomb, Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), a London archaeologist sent by Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe) to recover the mummy and the dagger, takes control of the operation. Nick shoots the pulley of chains to free the sarcophagus from the poisonous pool of mercury but the noise enrages a bunch of camel spiders who bite Chris in the neck injecting him with a venom that eventually changes his behaviour and forces Nick to kill him. Princess Ahmanet wants to gain Nick's loyalty and appears before him as a vision but Dr. Jekyll is determined to uncover her power over death and moves the sarcophagus to his facility under the Natural History Museum of London where he begins to pump mercury back into the mummy.
Both Cruise and Jake Johnson exchange witty banter and one liners throughout the movie but Johnson is the funnier of the two and unlike Simon Pegg (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol), fits in perfectly as the buddy. Russell Crowe is adequate as the two faced Dr. Jekyll and Edward Hyde; however, his airy English accent makes his character sound rather foolish. Sofia Boutella shines as the mummified Princess Ahmanet but Annabelle Wallis contributes little beyond her slightly above average good looks. "The Mummy" is one of the better Tom Cruise movies and Jake Johnson stands out as the perfect sidekick.
Both Cruise and Jake Johnson exchange witty banter and one liners throughout the movie but Johnson is the funnier of the two and unlike Simon Pegg (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol), fits in perfectly as the buddy. Russell Crowe is adequate as the two faced Dr. Jekyll and Edward Hyde; however, his airy English accent makes his character sound rather foolish. Sofia Boutella shines as the mummified Princess Ahmanet but Annabelle Wallis contributes little beyond her slightly above average good looks. "The Mummy" is one of the better Tom Cruise movies and Jake Johnson stands out as the perfect sidekick.