I am not a Tom Cruise fan at all, but on a whim I decided to rewatch this movie. I was pleasantly surprised by the rewatch.
I remembered that the movie started with a bang and was doing great until Cruise and Blunt got to the farm house then it stalled.
That was not my experience this time around. This was a really fun movie. The production values were top notch, the action was spectacular and the movie did a really good job of sticking to its logic. I also really loved the mech suits. I list this as the best use of a mech suit in a movie with District 9 and Avatar as a close second and third.
Ehhhhhhh....
I'm still personally giving that to Dredd (2012).
Its... basically the distilled, platonic ideal of 'a dumb action movie', at least to me.
Extremely simple in general concept, not a complex story at all.
But executed fucking brilliantly.
Don't get me wrong, other movies have better combat, more intricate and realistic choreography, crazier stunts, more mind bending stories.
But Dredd?
The movie is ... literally like the character.
Efficient, decisive, to the point, with exactly the right amount of spectacular violence, world building, action movie 'zinger' type lines, plot and character developement, with near perfect timing/pacing...
...and holy shit that soundtrack.
Oh, you want to convey furious intensity restrained into controlled bursts of maximally efficient destruction?
Cool!
Lets make the entire soundtrack out of angry sawtooth waveforms.