Jack Reacher (***)
Directed
by: Christopher McQuarrie
Starring:
Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins, David Oyelowo, Werner Herzog, Jai
Courtney, Robert Duvall
Seen:
December 31st 2012
***
Out of ****
Having
read a few of Lee Child’s books (Jack Reacher is based on his book One Shot), I
was excited when I heard news of the movie, and I read the book beforehand. I
was optimistic as One Shot was pretty entertaining (but not Child’s best), and
the screenplay was written by McQuarrie, who also wrote The Usual Suspects and
Valkyrie, two movies I rate highly. I was cautiously optimistic since the 5’6”
Tom Cruise was playing Jack Reacher, in the books described as a 6’5”, 250
pound behemoth; but Lee Child has stated that Reacher’s size in the books is a
metaphor for an unstoppable force, which I believe Cruise portrayed without a
problem.
Ex-sniper
James Barr (Sikora) is framed for the random public shooting of 5 people. The problem
is that he’s done this before, in Iraq, and was lucky to get away as his victims
were war criminals. The military police officer who caught him back then was
Jack Reacher, now a drifter, avoiding settling down anywhere for more than a
few days. Barr insists on Reacher as investigator, but the evidence is so
overwhelming that the odds that Reacher will even catch the frame much less
solve the mystery is overwhelming. Even more so when the real villain behind it
all, the Zec (Herzog), has a crew ‘sanitising’ everything, headed by Charlie
(Courtney), intent on stopping Reacher, Barr’s defense attorney Helen Rodin
(Pike), and Barr’s sniper friend Cash (Duvall), from uncovering the real truth,
the real conspiracy behind everything.
The
movie features some great conversions from book to screen, with a bar fight, a
car chase, and some more Reacher/Charlie confrontations standing out. As is
usually the case though, the book did more things better than the movie,
including two things that really stood out for me: (1) in the book, the reader
is kept in the dark and furiously guessing as to whether Barr was framed or not
nearly to the end, and (2) the book’s depiction of Reacher’s final approach and
assault on the Zec’s compound was in my opinion a perfect approach for some
very fresh visual elements, but in the movie this was simply replaced by racing
a car into the compound and thus robbing the movie of a potentially much more
tense climax.
Tom
Cruise can do almost anything he puts his mind to, and while he doesn’t fill
Reacher’s physique, he seems just as big on screen. As a Lee Child fan I am
happy with what he has done with Jack Reacher. Rosamund Pike is strong in her
small part as Helen Rodin, and Richard Jenkins is just as strong as District
Attorney Alex Rodin, Helen’s father and the main prosecutor on the case. Werner
Herzog is rather chilling as the mysterious Zec, and David Oyelowo and Jai
Courtney are both inscrutable as, respectively, Detective Emerson and the
deadly Charlie.
Jack
Reacher is a very good thriller, and even though this one was by no means
perfect, I would love to see more movies like this.
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