Directed by:
Christopher McQuarrieScreenplay:
Christopher McQuarrieCinematography:
Caleb DeschanelComposer:
Joe KraemerCast:
Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins, Werner Herzog, Jai Courtney, David Oyelowo, Vladimir Sizov, Robert Duvall, Alexia Fast, Joseph Sikora (more)VOD (5)
Plots(1)
In an innocent heartland city, five are shot dead by an expert sniper. The police quickly identify and arrest the culprit, and build a slam-dunk case. But the accused man claims he's innocent and says "Get Jack Reacher." Reacher himself sees the news report and turns up in the city. The defense is immensely relieved, but Reacher has come to bury the guy. Shocked at the accused's request, Reacher sets out to confirm for himself the absolute certainty of the man's guilt, but comes up with more than he bargained for. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (12)
I have to admit that even though I like Tom Cruise and action movies, I didn’t find Jack Reacher interesting at all when it launched in cinemas. I don’t even know why. In the end, I decided to watch it and I have to say that when it comes to action scenes, I haven’t seen a better movie. The main problem is the story. It starts our pretty interesting, but I somehow couldn’t get in sync with the intimate mood that follows the opening scene. Also, Tom isn’t a character I would grow very fond of at first sight. Well and there’s nobody else in the movie who could accomplish that. About halfway through the movie, I was getting pretty bored. But that was only until the scene with the Chevrolet Camaro. If nothing else, this scene was overflowing with energy in a way that I haven’t seen in any action scene in a long time. Too bad Jack Reacher isn’t the type I would love to go out and grab a beer with. He might convince me with his next movie.
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Today was the day I'd been saving the Jack for. It suited me perfectly. Great action, at times the shots of Jack driving reminded me of similar shots in Speed Racer. Jack was smart and cocky, but he wasn't immortal and he didn't know everything. He's just a really good ex-soldier. Helen had beautiful eyes that hid an intelligence that could expect not to be subjected to blonde jokes. Honestly I'd quite like to read the book because I'd like to know what was going through Jack's mind, that's how intrigued I was by his character. I had fun, Tom didn't come across as stunted, and the story moved along smartly. There was no room for pity, finally.
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Cruise as the adopted son of Steven Seagal and James Bond? No, more of a tired guy next door who had seen and experienced too much, and coincidentally, most of it consisted of ingenious deductions and fights with green brains. McQuarrie likes traditional genres, in The Way of the Gun he borrowed from a western, while here he worships an old-fashioned slow thriller with slowly dosed information and anachronically slow tracking-shots and disturbing hints. It's not bad at all, at least if one accepts this vague relationship between camp and deadly seriousness. I really enjoyed the exposition (which everyone curses), but I found myself fading a lot during the scenes where Cruise a) moralizes (does he really feel that someone is going to believe the anti-system rebel?), b) interrupts the speeches of other characters almost like a mythical superhero, although there is no reason to do anything like that. As a detective story, it works (there are not that many of them, so you will appreciate it if some deductive twist is successful), as a thriller it has a beard-mustache-leather charm, as camp there are plenty of attractions (Herzog and Duvall are perfect, the bathroom battle potentially iconic). As the thriller start of the "Reacher" series? Well, I didn't understand at all what McQuarrie wanted to pull out against the competition, apart from the confused rambling between humor and seriousness, successful self-defeating jokes and a world where they pretend to have ultra-realism, and for a while the string that the original A-Team strummed. If he avoided the heroic bombast and kept his feet on the ground, it could have been a dignified, prudent crime film. But that wouldn't be enough for Jack Reacher, would it? Four stars for having had a lot of fun for most of the two hours, sometimes perhaps against the dignified intentions of the creators and little Tom's persistent efforts to be as hard as granite in his fifties and as seductive as Cupid. P.S. Someone should explain to Chris that blondes with big eyes are nice, but their unreasonable staring into the camera doesn't seem witty at all.
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A decent enough film, almost a "thriller comedy" at times. It’s something in the style of Gibson's Payback, with one big minus - why did it have to be clear from the beginning that the person who did the shooting was not the arrested man, but someone else? Couldn't they have deceived us for at least half the film? I wouldn't have minded that at all. Otherwise, it’s a quality film in all respects. The opening shot through the rifle scope may steal from Two-Minute Warning, but then it's one great scene after another, with the bathroom scene being somehow perversely successful and the sensational car chase making me feel sorry for the beautiful mustang. I liked Tom Cruise better here than I did in Mission: Impossible, I liked Rosamund Pike as much as always, i.e., very much, and Robert Duvall was just the cherry on the cherry cake. As for composer Joe Kraemer, I hope that after Jack Reacher he will start getting more jobs like this, because he obviously has ideas and he knows how to do it.
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I can’t remember seeing a movie which was be so likable, while at the same time undermining itself so much. The “good honest" thriller style of the 90’s has gone out of fashion, so every attempt to revive it is nice to see. Reacher has the advantage that despite being serious it doesn’t take itself too seriously which is even more admirable if we take into account the casting of Cruise who is certainly not the right person for the role of charismatic guys reeking of testosterone. Also worth mentioning is the cool directing (and that’s not just because of the opening eight minute taciturn sequence) and the emphasis on action scenes which aren’t over the top and involving cheating using CGI effects. Against that, it’s needlessly long. Not that there are unnecessary scenes, but many are longer that they should be and would be more suitable in the cut scenes section on the DVD/Blu-ray. Then there is the predictability of the plot which shifts the meaning of that word onto a completely new level (and it’s nothing to do with the fact that, for some weird reason, we know from the opening scene that this time Barr is innocent). The “who and how" is clear from the very beginning and very soon the “why" becomes apparent too, but the characters find out only after a good seventy minutes. And the biggest mistake you can make is to hire a (non)actor with one of the most charismatic voices on the planet for the role of arch villain, and then to use him as no more than an extra and in just two scenes. Otherwise I was satisfied and hopefully for number two the authors will learn from their mistakes.
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