Jack Reacher

 

Last Christmas, Paramount had a big box office success by teaming up with Tom Cruise for the action thriller, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.  Obviously hoping lightning will strike twice, they've partnered with him for another thriller, Jack Reacher, based on the series of books by Lee Child.  Those expecting another fast-paced Mission: Impossible-style thriller may be disappointed.  This movie is much slower, and more focused on dialogue than action.  It's also very silly, but it at least has the good sense to know this, and not to take itself entirely seriously.  It may not be very memorable, but I have to be honest and say I kind of liked it.

Jack Reacher (Cruise) is a former military man, turned drifter.  As one character describes him, "he's a ghost", with no credit cards, background history, or personal records.  This obviously makes him next to impossible to track down.  Fortunately for the investigators behind a recent mass murder, they don't have to.  Jack shows up when a trained sniper named James Barr (Joseph Sikora) is apprehended after shooting five random people on a street (which provides this film with one extremely tense opening sequence).  When questioned about his involvement in the shooting, Barr simply requests for the presence of Jack Reacher.  When Jack does arrive, he confirms that he is not friends with the convicted shooter, but he does have a past with him.  Jack teams up with Barr's lawyer, Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike), to work out a case for her client.  But, as Jack begins to investigate further, he begins to realize that the whole murder plot may be much bigger than initially thought, and that maybe the targets chosen that day were not random.

Jack Reacher contains one of the strongest openings to a thriller I've seen this year, as we witness everyday people going about their lives through a sniper's scope, before they are suddenly gunned down.  The first five minutes or so contains no dialogue, focusing instead on the intensity of the situation.  If anything, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie knows how to grab our attention right off the bat.  At this big scene, however, the movie takes on a much slower and methodical pace, as Jack slowly picks the case apart, and uncovers the much bigger story behind it.  The slower pace does drag at certain times, but it works, thanks a lot to Cruse's successful slow-burn lead performance.  He portrays Jack as a very patient and calculating man, and the plot follows suit, giving him plenty of time to uncover the truth.

Less you think the film is all quiet sleuthing and finding the facts, the movie also does have a very goofy side to it as well.  Sometimes this is intentional, thanks to Reacher's often sarcastic sense of humor.  There is also a very odd scene when Jack is attacked by three incompetent thugs in a sequence that almost borders on slapstick.  In other ways, the movie is sometimes just plain weird.  Acclaimed filmmaker, Walter Herzog, shows up as an over the top Russian villain who looks and acts like he just walked out of a second rate James Bond movie.  With his glass eye, broken English, and strange monologue to one of his thugs about how he once had to chew some of his own fingers off just to survive once as a child, it's a very bizarre character, and an even stranger performance from Herzog.  Still, if his directing career ever goes belly up, he may have a future playing weirdo villains.

The plot in Jack Reacher also becomes very convoluted as it goes along, with crooked cops and a suspicious D.A. (played by Richard Jenkins, although he is sadly given little to do) getting mixed up into it all.  It never becomes so complex that we can't follow, however.  And really, it's Cruise's performance and the occasional moments of intentional (and unintentional) humor that carries us through the film's shortcomings.  This is essentially a B-movie with A-level production values.  Maybe it's a credit to the filmmakers that it works as well as it does.  The director knows how to make this material work, as do the actors.  I think this is a case that if I was just reading the script, I probably would have hated it.  But thanks to the efforts up on the screen, it succeeds.

 

Will I remember Jack Reacher a year, or even months from now?  I highly doubt it.  It's surprisingly small-scale for a Christmas weekend release starring Tom Cruise.  But, truth be told, I had fun while I was watching it.  I can't picture this becoming as big of a blockbuster as Cruise's last action film, but it does its job, and that's okay in the end.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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