Jack Reacher

Before I begin I should point out that I’ve never read any of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, though even if I had I would still review this film on a standalone basis. One medium is a book and the other medium is a film. You can’t compare them. However, if you are getting your knickers in a twist that Tom Cruise is portraying a man who is described in the books as being 6’ 5’’ tall and weighing 250lbs, my response is this. In Stephen King’s novella from which The Shawshank Redemption was adapted, the character of Red is a middle-aged Irishman with greying red hair. In the film he’s Morgan Freeman. Didn’t ruin the movie, did it? Anyway, to the point of the matter; is this a good film? For 45 minutes it’s great. Starting off with a bang (or bangs), a sniper picks off people from atop a multi-storey car park. It’s a short scene but still tense, and it reminded me of Peter Bogdanovich’s cult classic Targets from the 1960’s. The cops soon get their man, but when Reacher (a drifter who was formerly a military police officer) appears and starts to begin to investigate the shootings himself, it soon becomes apparent that not all things add up. It’s nicely paced, with Reacher behaving in a detective like manner and the plot being slowly unveiled to the audience. There’s a bit of action and to be fair to Cruise he does convincingly kick the required arse when required, though it’s in one of the fight scenes that the film goes off the rails and never recovers. It concerns a donnybrook between Cruise and a number of thugs in a house, which begins with Reacher first of all seemingly not being affected by a surprise point blank whack in the back of the head with a baseball bat (I know it’s a film, but come on!), which then descends into a complete farce as the hooligans in question find themselves becoming wedged between a doorframe (a la the overweight detectives in The Fast Show) and arguing as to who’s going to get the chance to finish Reacher off. It’s dumb beyond belief and makes a mockery of the hard edged beginning of the film. From there on in it all becomes middle of the road, with a dull and confusing car chase failing to raise the pulse leading up to the conclusion of the film which comes across as an afterthought, primarily as the main twists have all been revealed about 30 minutes earlier. I can only assume they ran out of dosh after recruiting Cruise as the rest of the cast is odd to say the least, highlighted by Werner Herzog (yes, you read that right) as the main (albeit mainly off screen) bad guy. Worst of all though is Rosamund Pike, who is meant to be a hotshot lawyer but spends the whole film barely speaking above a whisper (her struggles with an American accent seem to be the reason), looking wide eyed and open mouthed, and appearing to be a late entry for the award for the Most Cleavage Seen On a Movie Screen 2012. All this and I haven’t even mentioned the most interesting aspect of the film, that being it’s director, Christopher McQuarrie. I suspect his selection was due to his past association with Cruise on Valkyrie, as he doesn’t really have the experience direction wise to helm something as big as this. McQuarrie obviously knows his way round a script, but that can’t compensate for directing chops and it shows here. Oddly enough he even struggles with the shoot-out at the end which is limp as they come and surprising when you consider the scenes of weapons carnage he gave us in The Way Of The Gun. Paramount Studios were so excited by this that they’ve moved Marc Forster’s World War Z back by six months. Though it has its moments, this is still somewhat of a disappointment capped off by an overriding feeling of what could have been

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict

Cruise isn’t actually all that bad, but a strong start is quickly derailed by an awful supporting cast and McQuarrie’s lost direction. Rating: 6/10.