Tom Cruise (“Top Gun”, “Mission: Impossible”) might just be the last person I expected to have the lead role in a Stanley Kubrick (“A Clockwork Orange”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”) picture as one fetches the big money while the other gathers an amazing critical reception, this made me sceptical as well as intrigued in “Eyes Wide Shut” and I’m happy to say it delivers.

Cruise stars as New Yorker Doctor Bill Harford, whose wife Alice (Nicole Kidman “The Golden Compass”, “The Others”) tells him her sexual fantasies about other men. This angers and confuses him so he goes out a finds a seedy sexual underworld lurking in the city. The film asks the question “What’s worse? A. Having fantasies about doing something B. Coming close to doing something in real-life” and this doesn’t have to be about sex.

I’m amazed Cruise was recruited for this picture as he plays a pretentious jerk that almost seems like an attack on Cruise’s other performance and the actor himself. Cruise does an excellent job here. Nicole Kidman is less good but then again her part requires a lot less work. I like how the two work together in the film because they actually spend very little time onscreen together. The other characters are interesting too.

While it is no “2001”, this film certainly is incredible. Like I said if nothing else it is the question embedded in the film that makes it so darn fantastic. Like most if not all of Kubrick’s films it can have a sense of humour and also be utterly terrifying but like most if not all of his films it is the questions and revelations that are more frightening than anything you actually see. Tom Cruise fans may leave with a bizarre expression on their face (they may not have realised it was such a deep picture they were walking into) but I’m certain Kubrick fans will be thrilled.