Tom Cruise tries to avoid the attentions of an overbearing Mummy in slick action adventure

military alongside Sergeant Chris Vail ( Jake Johnson). The two men abuse their position to steal artefacts for collectors.

A daring treasure hunt in Iraq – formerly Mesopotamia – unearths the tomb of long forgotten Egyptian princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who was buried alive 5000 years ago after she forged a blood pact with Set, the god of war, to murder her father (Selva Rasalingam) and seize the throne.

Plucky archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Wallis) and a crack military squad led by Colonel Greenaway (Courtney B Vance) fly Ahmanet’s sarcophagus back to the UK.

En route, a murder of crows brings down the flight.

Jenny escapes by parachute but Nick perishes… only to be reanimated without a scratch by a newly resurrected Ahmanet, who has chosen him as the human vessel for Set.

A haphazard quest for salvation leads to a shadowy organisation called Prodigium fronted by chemical pathologist Dr Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe).

The Mummy is the opening salvo in a universe of movie monstrosities that will include Javier Bardem as Frankenstein’s monster and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man.

Kurtzman’s picture is suitably dark to warrant a 15 certificate – spiders and rats abound – and polished action trumps gutwrenching emotion throughout.

As Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 proved, it is possible to have both.

Even with Cruise’s bruising zero gravity acrobatics, The Mummy is not the daddy of this year’s summer blockbusters.