REVIEW
听
Jack Reacher
Where: Cineplex Odeon Westshore, Empire Capitol 6, SilverCity
Starring: Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins
Directed and written by: Christopher McQuarrie
Parental advisory: PG, violence, coarse language
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
听
The first thing about Jack Reacher is his size. In a series of adventure novels by Lee Childs, Reacher 鈥� a former soldier who now drifts through America, righting wrongs and rearranging jaws 鈥� is six-foot-five and weighs 250 pounds. In Jack Reacher, the film adaptation of the book One Shot, he is played by Tom Cruise, who is five-foot-eight. Yes, he鈥檚 short, but don鈥檛 worry: the movie is really long.
It鈥檚 also pretty entertaining, giving the limitations of its unassailable hero and a vision of the world that allows for baroque villains who prove their will to live by chewing off their own fingers.
That guy, named The Zec, is played with quiet intensity by none other than Werner Herzog, the German director. If you鈥檝e seen his movies (and I鈥檓 particularly thinking of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans) you鈥檒l realize that it鈥檚 a bit of an exaggeration. Herzog is probably capable of nothing more than chewing off other people鈥檚 fingers.
Cruise, though, despite being slightly undersized, fills the bill. He鈥檚 proven his action-hero bona fides in a series of Mission: Impossible films, and 鈥� speaking of quiet intensity 鈥� he has something in his stare that makes you think he鈥檚 six-foot-five by some measure of human achievement. Cruise has become a figure of fun in recent years, but as an actor, he鈥檚 all business 鈥� and that鈥檚 Jack Reacher from head to toe (or, in Cruise鈥檚 case, from head to mid-knee). Reacher doesn鈥檛 exceed his grasp.
The movie begins with a sequence that seems badly timed, given the recent events in sa国际传媒icut: A man drives into a Pittsburgh parking garage, emerges with an assault rifle, and shoots five people seemingly at random.
The scene of one of them, a young woman carrying a child, is frighteningly evocative. It鈥檚 a coincidence, but an uncomfortable one that raises troubling questions about violence and the movies.
The police quickly arrest James Barr (Joseph Sikora), who has left his fingerprints and clues everywhere, but he won鈥檛 confess. 鈥淕et Jack Reacher,鈥� he tells District Attorney Alex Rodin (Richard Jenkins) and detective Emerson (David Oyelowo).
This provides the chance for a lot of exposition about who this Reacher is: a shadowy former army investigator with a slew of bravery medals and a reputation for finding the truth at all costs. He鈥檚 difficult to find because he wanders the country with no luggage, no credit cards and no connections. All he has is charisma, intelligence, a prodigious memory, a lethal right hand and chest muscles that must cost Cruise several hours a day in the gym.
Reacher has connections with Barr from their days serving in Iraq, and he agrees to stick around and help his attorney Helen Rodin (played with cool intelligence by Rosamund Pike), the estranged daughter of the D.A. Reacher himself is something of a cipher beyond his single-minded pursuit of the truth, so Helen provides the father-and-daughter drama of the modern thriller.
Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie (The Way of the Gun) establishes the character early, with some clever sleuthing (hey, he鈥檚 smart!) and then a bar fight in which Reacher shows us 鈥� in the manner of heroic drifters of all genres 鈥� that he is not a man to be taken lightly, not if you value your testicles (hey, he鈥檚 tough, too).
It鈥檚 a confrontation custom-made for Cruise, who seems like just the sort of guy who might be underestimated by the toughs: Would they so readily pick on someone the size of a linebacker?
There鈥檚 a hint of romance in the air, but Reacher isn鈥檛 that kind of man, and this isn鈥檛 that kind of movie. It鈥檚 a fantasy about a man who sets his own rules and finds justice in the barrel of a gun, and that doesn鈥檛 leave room for a lot of love.
It also doesn鈥檛 leave a lot of room for such niceties as Miranda rights and so on: Reacher is a vigilante, a walking, fighting symbol of our desire for revenge against the overwhelming forces of evil.
The result is a transparent mystery solved by an opaque hero. It may be too generic for a promised movie franchise, but if it does last, it will be fun watching Cruise grow into the role.
