Tom Cruise is a Bad Ass

I always say, say what you want about Tom Cruise, but as an actor, he is awesome.  Yes, its crazy to swing from the Burj and all that, but he did it and it was entertaining.

An image I took of Burj Khalifa
back in Dec 2009 before it was open

Sometime last year it was announced that the new Mission Impossible film would be shot in Dubai.  Pretty exciting.  Even though there are a a fair amount of films shot around this region, to have such a blockbuster wouldn't be such a bad thing.

So one day in November 2010 I come home from work and look out the window at the Burj Khalifa.  I see a man scaling down the tower with way too much finesse to be a window washer.  I had my suspicions and thought this might be something to do with the film.  After all, how can you not shoot an action movie here and not feature this massive structure that is 828 meters / 2,716 feet high?

The following weekend I looked up as I was having my breakfast and low and behold there were a few people swinging and running up and down the Burj as a helicopter hovered over.  As we know Tom Cruise likes to do a lot of his own stunts, I would have bet money that was him.  Reports and pictures later confirmed it was.

Its a bird, its a plane, no its Tom Cruise!

I don't have any kind of zoom that can reach that far, but I still took a few snapshots.  - So excuse the poor quality and noise in the images further down.

Wondering how to explain this to my son who was only finishing age 2 at the time, I didn't really have to because he was more interested in the helicopter than the fact that there were some crazy guys playing on the tall building.  I accept he is a risk taker, but I don't want to feed too many crazy ideas in that department just yet!

It was impressive because they were at it all day, all weekend.  I heard they also continued the following weekend, but we were traveling, so didn't see it.  So at least 3 or 4 days of filming for just a few seconds, or a minute of a thrilling scene.

We finally went to see the film on Christmas Eve.  I like a good caper film and a little action is always welcome.  In my opinion, it delivered.  It was fun and I would be lying if I said I was not interested to see my apartment building from that angle.

Tom came back to Dubai to open the movie at the Dubai Film Festival in early December of this year.  The press said that he invited all the extras to the movie.  I thought that was really decent.  Based on all the buzz and snapshots in the newspapers about him, he seems like he is a decent guy.  While he came here to make money and do crazy stunts for his movie, at the end of the day he worked hard and earned it.  He didn't have crazy publicity stunts where people paid thousands of dollars to have dinner with him and then sneak out, nor did he come here looking for his new best friend for a "reality" show, he just came here and did his job.  Not just a bad ass, but a classy one too!

Be sure to check Google images as there are
way better images of this out there than mine!

Yes, Tom Cruise is that spec on the outside