Jack Reacher - Movie Review

What:                                            Jack Reacher

Reviewer:                                     Joe Calleri
Stars:                                             2.5

I confess from the outset that my wife and I recently saw Jack Reacher to kill (and I use the term advisedly) a couple of hours and to escape the coastal summer heat.

This is a rather well made, paint by numbers, “safe” crime / thriller movie that breaks no new cinematic ground. You will get the nagging feeling you have seen all of this before, but only with different actors and, possibly, done better.

So, let’s get to the story-line:

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 5 innocent people are slain by a lone gunman. The killings bear all the hallmarks of a professional hit. An ex-military sniper (Joseph Sikora as James Barr) is captured by David Oyelowo’s Detective Emerson. Barr implores the police and District Attorney, Alex Rodin (played by Richard Jenkins) to “Get Jack Reacher”. Enter – almost magically - Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, a former US Army Military Police major, who joins forces with Helen Rodin (UK actress Rosamund Pike), daughter of DA Rodin, who is tasked with defending Barr. Reacher and Helen Rodin soon uncover a murky, bloody, violent conspiracy led by a character called The Zec (scarily played by Werner Herzog) to take over a construction company.

Those who are squeamish when it comes to graphic and gratuitous depictions of on-screen violence should avoid this film and save their hard-earned dollars. I was, frankly, uncomfortable with the many scenes of violence – characters are disposed of by being shot or, in the case of a young girl, Sandy, suffocated. Sandy’s murder and dumping by one of the rather anonymous villains in this film, is unnecessarily gruesome and gratuitous.

But, it is the opening sequence of carefully calculated mass murder by a sniper that, coming so soon after the Newtown shootings, I found most confronting and objectionable. I understand the producers delayed the release of this film by one day out of respect to the memories of the victims of the Newtown killer. Galling tokenism.

There are many other violent scenes of this film that I will not discuss, save to say that, it is in my view, lazy film-making to substitute plot and character development with another fight, or killing, or car chase. Sure, the car chase is lengthy and impressive enough, and most movie-goers are probably already aware of Cruise’s car handling prowess. But, so what?

Besides a plot that is hard to follow and fathom (just why are the villains so desperate to take control of the construction company?), one of the other problems with this movie is the casting of Cruise as Jack Reacher. For anyone who has read Lee Child’s novels (this movie is based on Child’s novel “One Shot”), they will know that Jack Reacher is 6’5” tall. One thing Tom Cruise is not is 6’5” tall! So, the producers have assumed that, most viewers will not give a damn that, so much artistic licence has been taken with the casting of Cruise.

Rosamund Pike is serviceable eye candy and the second of the two token females in this film. The first, of course, is Sandy. There is the barest hint of any romantic entanglement between her character and Reacher. God forbid the producers introduce anything resembling a human relationship into the movie.

So, there you have it. Another ultra-violent, unimaginative, Hollywood crime / thriller. I for one, hope that this movie does not launch its own movie franchise.