Literary-to-cinema adaptations are risky business (Just see: Alex Cross). But the big surprise over Christmas was Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher. John Bierly says it was the 'write' stuff...
At the close of his desert tour-of-duty in Iraq, U.S. Army sniper James Barr (Joseph Sikora) literally got away with murder. Years later, in Philadelphia, six shots fired from a faraway parking garage kill five random people in a violent daylight attack (made even more horrifying by recent real-life headlines). Overwhelming evidence leads to Barr's arrest, but the troubled young man's only response to the charges is one desperately scribbled sentence: "Get Jack Reacher."
Reacher (Tom Cruise), an off-the-grid ronin who was powerless to bring Barr to justice all those years ago when he was the military policeman in charge of Barr's investigation, arrives on his own terms... not to help Barr, but to bury him under the justice he previously escaped. But as Reacher digs deeper, the only things that add up are all the things that don't.
As Reacher relentlessly pounds the pavement to uncover the facts, Barr's gutsy attorney Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike of Wrath of the Titans, Surrogates, and Die Another Day) begins to fear that Reacher's right about a conspiracy that may extend as far as her own father, District Attorney Alex Rodin (Richard Jenkins of Burn After Reading, Step Brothers and The Cabin in the Woods). They won't like the answers they find, but they might be able to make things right if they survive.
Villainy in the film comes courtesy of "The Zec," a mysterious, malevolent, Machiavellian monster played by prolific writer/director (and sometimes actor) Werner Herzog with a deceptive simplicity that's absolutely chilling. His henchman, played by Jai Courtney of Spartacus: Vengeance, proves himself more than just hired muscle with a manipulative charm as dangerous as any bullet. Courtney really shines here in a role that should ease the minds of anyone unfamiliar with the young man who'll be sharing the screen with Bruce Willis as John McClane's son, Jack, in A Good Day to Die Hard next month.
Rounding out the principal cast are David Oyelowo (Spooks, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Red Tails, Lincoln) as the detective who tries to provide what little assistance Reacher will allow and living legend Robert Duvall as a former Marine Corps gunnery sergeant Reacher recruits when the whole thing starts to fall apart the hard way.
Jack Reacher is an adaptation of One Shot, the ninth entry (and one of the very best) in the series of Reacher novels by British author Lee Child. Longtime readers aggressively protested the casting of dark-haired Cruise, whose lean, compact frame is nowhere near the height or muscle mass that make the blond Reacher the biggest guy in any room in the books. Having read many of the books myself, I was thrilled to have a performer of his calibre. Because even though Child writes Reacher as a mountain, Cruise plays him like a planet of cunning intelligence and tough charisma.
Christopher McQuarrie, whose writing credits include The Usual Suspects and upcoming films The Wolverine, All You Need Is Kill, and Mission: Impossible 5 (the latter two also with Cruise), penned the screenplay and directs the film in a no-nonsense manner entirely befitting the title character. Bursts of action are brutal, cool, and clear, with a mid-film car chase (with Cruise really behind the wheel) that's exhilarating without the help of sneaky edits or digital trickery.
Finely acted, thoughtfully paced (despite its 130-minute runtime), and bursting with smarts, Jack Reacher is a superb throwback to the kinds of classic action thrillers that placed characters before computer effects. A memorable protagonist like Reacher and a leading man performance from one of those rare guys who's both an actor and a movie star make a capable combination that will hopefully generate enough word-of-mouth to carry on through to a sequel or two.
9/10
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