The theaters have been filled of late with deeply-layered and emotionally-daunting films, often leaving the audience meddling with their own troublesome afterthoughts and questions. So it feels like a breath of fresh air to have a straightforward and classically-styled detective drama with a leading man bereft of unfinished inner turmoil and full of unquestionable goals and morality. Christopher McQuarrie’s rich and dark, yet somewhat inconsistent filmmaking style finds some success with Jack Reacher, an adaptation from one novel from Lee Child’s series of 17 novels about the exacting and heroic lone ranger out for justice.
Ultimately, this film is a one man show, led by the stone-faced superstar Tom Cruise. His bright, crippling smile has been exchanged for a darkly singular persona and hard-faced focus, driven by his unshakeable need for justice. Those somewhat too-perfect pearly whites are fortunately kept at bay, allowing his portrayal of Jack Reacher to shine with a muscly and hard-knuckled determination. There is no shortage of comic book, grandiose heroism, not to mention silliness. Child’s Reacher is a 6-foot-5, blonde tower of a man, but Tom Cruise pulls it off, and illustrates exactly what we expect from the big screen: unchecked imaginative license and allowance of adaptation restructuring to keep the audiences swooning.
The opening scene establishes a haunting, and a little too-close-to-home murder spree perpetrated by a single, well trained gunman. He shoots down five innocent pedestrians, causing chaos. The hunt for the killer begins swiftly after, and within 17 hours, the detectives have what appears to be a close-and-shut case against an ex-military sniper named James Barr. However, since we’ve already seen the actual shooter, we know he;s been framed. Before the suspect is beaten into a coma while in police custody, he writes one simple statement on paper to the detective, “Get Jack Reacher.”
When we are introduced to a nomadic, off the grid wanderer named Jack Reacher, he has no driver’s license, no car, no home address, and a penchant for breaking the rules. Reacher is an ex-military investigator who’s disappeared from the mainstream for no known reason and he may be the only man who can uncover the reasons behind this seemingly pointless massacre. But how do they find him? Well, Reacher comes to them, of course, and quickly delights all with wit and intrigue. His calm assertiveness is what we’ve come to expect from Cruise, and it drives the saucy interplay between the cast.
James Barr’s attorney is a young-and-busty, all-business attorney, Helen (Rosamund Pike), with much to prove to her father, who happens to be the district attorney she is trying the case against. The steadfast lead detective finds much in common with Jack Reacher, and their bravado carousel makes for an interesting balance of mutual respect and chest-butting machismo. Helen hires Jack Reacher as her lead investigator, though not without resistance (of course), and the truth begins to unravel. There are higher powers involved, and in dark, abandoned industrial nightscapes we encounter the brooding henchman who were really behind the massacre. Some missing fingers, foreign sinister dealings, and cold blooded murders later, and we see this is all meant to pit the unflinching heroism of Jack Reacher against evil, personified by film’s end by Robert Duvall. And while Jack’s efforts to battle back these forces only muddy the case at hand, one thing is for certain, he won’t rest until he brings justice to those who deserve it. Bullets fly with reckless abandon, and comedic moments follow not too far behind.
While Jack Reacher has moments of ludicrousness and asinine heroism (one of my favorite lines from Jack: “I am going to murder you and drink your blood from a boot”), it’s a movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s hard not to be charmed by the movie’s tight narrative and intensity brought to bear by Cruise. And while this will not likely make a lot of year-end lists, perhaps the more interesting question is whether this film is the first in a new Tom Cruise-driven franchise. There are hints that aspects of the character resonate with the actor, and it could offer a much needed transition from his over-inflated Mission Impossible franchise that has nowhere left to go. Good luck, Tom.
