Don't let the marketing or the trailer fool
you, for director Christopher McQuarrie's 'Jack Reacher' isn't
really an action flick. It has a couple of action
sequences in it, and they are pretty good action sequences,
but 'Jack Reacher' is more of an investigative procedural, and
an old school throwback of an investigative procedural at
that. And it's a darn good throwback to the old school
investigative procedural, harkening back to a simpler time
when bad guys were really bad, dames dressed inappropriately
for the work place, no matter what their job was, and good
guys were good because they told us they were. Even
though they probably broke more laws than the bad guys.
Some dude (Jai Courtney), for no reason we can tell, sets up
shop in a parking garage and with his sniper rifle in tow
starts picking people off. The Cop (David Oyelowo)
investigates, gathers clues and makes the bust. Next
thing we know retired army sniper John Barr (Joseph Sikora) is
being grilled for this crime by the Cop and District Attorney
(Richard Jenkins) and the electric chair will be unavoidable,
but we know Barr didn't do this thing. The only word
Barr offers up by way of defense, before he's put into a coma…
it's complicated… is the name of Jack Reacher.
Who is Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise)? From what we can glean
he's a drifter, used to be military police at one time, and
now just floats from place to place violently setting things
right. Reacher has a keen interest in this case because
he knows Barr, and he suspects Barr very well could've done
this crime, and knowing Reacher as we do, if the man believes
Barr did commit this awful act he's much better off in a coma
than dealing with Reacher Styled Justice.
Of course there the dame (Rosamund Pike), who
is Barr's lawyer only fighting to keep him off of death row,
figuring his guilt to be fairly obvious. Her situation
is complicated by the fact that her old man is the District
Attorney who has made his mark putting people on death
row. Reacher and the Lawyer check some things out and
everything adds up really good. Just about
perfect. And therein lays the problem.
Now Jack Reacher knows something isn't right, but worst still
is that the bad people knows that Reacher knows that something
isn't right, and these people… I tell you… they aren't good
people. We don't know much but we do know you don't put
a woman that pretty in a movie like this unless she's going to
find herself in some peril and in desperate need of rescuing,
and we also know that bad people with every conceivable
advantage… numbers, weapons, familiarity with the
environment… they really don't have chance. This I know
as well.
There are a lot of really, really good things about 'Jack
Reacher', such as the existence of Robert Duvall for
instance. This dude is so old that he could biologically
be Tommy Lee Jones Dad. That's how old Robert Duvall
is. Robert Duvall has this inner hostility, a trait he's
possessed ever since I've started watching him perform, and it
comes through so beautifully in the roles he chooses, such as
Gunner Sgt. Cash in this movie. I probably wouldn't want
to hang out with this angry old dude, but if I needed an angry
old dude for a role, I'm calling Robert Duvall. With
Tommy Lee Jones on standby. Another thing that really
good about this movie is Tom Cruise. Now I've never read
the Lee Child's novels that this character is based on, though
I believe I'm about to start, but even without knowing
beforehand that Reacher is supposed an imposing beast,
admittedly there's not a lot that's initially intimidating
about Tom Cruise. The man is kind of small, and maybe a
little too good-looking, but that being said as time goes on
we do buy into Jack Reacher's badassery. When Reacher
told that bad dude that 'He means to beat him to death and
drink his blood from a boot'… I believed him. That guy
should've too. I enjoyed the way McQuarrie set his movie
up, I enjoyed the films progression, and we enjoyed the
bloodlust resolution.
There are odd things of course, such as if you happen to be a
bad dude with the skill to shoot a gnat off of somebody's ear
from three miles away, maybe it would be easier just to kill
Jack Reacher as he stood by one of the many windows he posed
in front of as opposed to the convoluted rigmarole these
clowns dreamed up. Better still, I find that patsies are
much more effective as dead men, committing suicide possibly,
as opposed to creaking out names of people who will bring down
your organization once they show up in town. And if you
are a bad guy, staring down the barrel of a guy who is clearly
insane, even though he's a 'good guy', don't go telling this
guy how you're going beat the rap because your all rich and
powerful and stuff. I'm pretty sure bad guys only do
that in movies with real life bad guys begging for their
lives.
It's official, I'm a Jack Reacher guy. Unfortunately I
don't think enough people went to see this movie to warrant
more Reacher movies, and this makes me sad. Fifteen
years ago Cruise in something like this was lock. Today,
not so much. On one hand I'm glad the Movie Star system
is slowly crumbling because it gives more opportunities to
more people, but on the other hand… fewer and fewer movies
like this will show up at the cinema. Fortunately for me
I believe in lower budget Straight to DVD movies which a lot
of you out there don't believe in. Maybe Reacher will
show up there. Obviously without Tom Cruise,
unfortunately. Or maybe with Tom Cruise. You never
know.
