Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise), a former Army Police Officer and ghost of a man who drifts through the world only seen when he wants to, comes out of hiding to help in the investigation of a former military sniper who apparently shot and killed five random people.
Cruise both stars in and produces this efficient, no-nonsense thriller that’s less of a whodunit and more of a didhedoit. Its suitably pulpy plot often veers into the ridiculous or clichéd but, for the most part, it embraces its silliness rather than tries to play it off as if nothing’s wrong. It almost reads like a big-budget thriller version of CSI but instead of a microscope and fingerprint kit, Cruise has a tough guy one-liner, gun to fire or punch to throw at every turn.
A lot of fans of the Jack Reacher series of books have complained (without having seen the film for themselves, I might add) that Cruise is a bad fit for the role, not least because he is about a foot shorter than the way the character is described on the page. However, if you’re willing to forget that pre-conceived attribute (I suspect, despite its popularity, that most people who see this movie won’t be familiar with the source material), Cruise brings a lot to the character that while different from the book version is still effective in his own right. He just has a undeniable movie star charisma about him and it’s fun to see him acting the tough guy with an effortless cool as he delivers often cheesy dialogue with a knowing wink at the camera (franchise alert!).
It’s very much The Tom Cruise Show (“A Tom Cruise Production” appears boldly at the start, followed by his acting credit) but he’s supported by the likes of Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins and Robert Duvall, and while they’re kind of wasted it nevertheless doesn’t hurt as they generally help to class up the movie. A special mention must go to the one and only Werner Herzog, who is a ton of fun as the villain even if he’s hamming it up in a different world to the rest of the movie. With his mannered line delivery, incomparable German accent and all, he represents the more oddball side to an otherwise fairly ordinary but nevertheless efficacious film.
Jack Reacher is everything that the recent Alex Cross (read our review here) wanted to be: ridiculous but sort of getting away with it. There was a feeling that Alex Cross thought every single line was the most badass thing in the world whereas there’s a more savvy tone to the proceedings here. Thanks to a relatively smart script by Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects), the film knows it’s over-the-top and a little unbelievable and has fun with that. Car chases, fist fights, shootouts, one-liners, mystery; all the stuff you’d want from this type of film is here, included in almost checklist type fashion but pulled off with sufficient panache that it’s hard to care that you’ve seen this kind of thing before. It’s not going to change the face of the thriller genre but for what it’s aiming to be it gets the job done.
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