Reading one of Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels is a character-revealing exercise akin to dealing with the 12 year old who never wants to lose at anything on the playground. You can get angry at him, walk away and leave him to play with himself for the rest of the afternoon, knowing your behavior will accomplish nothing but give you a fragile peace of mind or you can not take him seriously, pollute his inner world with your most absurd thoughts and have a good time at his expense. That annoying 12 year old convinced some Hollywood honcho he was important enough to have his own movie, aptly named JACK REACHER.That's right, Lee Child's novel ONE SHOT made it to the silver screen and thanks to a director with both skills and a sense of humor, it is almost an enjoyable experience.
An ''innocent hearland city'', here represented by Pittsburgh *, falls prey to a crazy sniper who guns down five random people. The police operate with scary efficiency and arrest ex-marine James Barr (Joseph Sikora) for the crime. When given a notepad to confess and avoid lethal injection, Barr write : ''GET JACK REACHER'' then walls himself in silence. But one doesn't just get Jack Reacher (awesomely enough, Tom Cruise), Jack Reacher gets to them first...and he does. He walks in the D.A's (Richard Jenkins) office and says...''Jack Reach...'' I mean ''James Barr''. Stricken by an almighty fear, D.A Rodin and local cop with a soft spot for eyeballing people Emerson (David Oyelowo) bring him up to speed on everything. But Reacher is never satisfied if he doesn't get some action and decides to stay in town, team up with the D.A's daughter who happens to be a defense lawyer (Rosamund Pike) and find out if Barr really, really did it. Because, of course, he didn't.
JACK REACHER's director Christopher McQuarrie is not your run-of-the-mill filmmaking grunt. He knows what he's doing and has this tongue-in-cheek sense of humor about what he does. Honestly, if he showed just a little more willingness to make fun of his main character, JACK REACHER could have become a cult hit. Whenever there is some sexual tension between Reacher and Helen Rodin, things become overly lascivous and Reacher often has his shirt off for some reason. There is also one of the greatest semi-intentionally funny scenes of all-time, when two anonymous, huling bad guys are trying to get rid of Reacher in a tiny bathroom. Hilarity ensues and it is embodying the spirtif of the novels so well, I couldn't help but applause. Fortunately for us, that scene has been made available on the internets. Enjoy!
What was I saying again? Oh yeah, Christopher McQuarrie has skills. He truly does and it is best illustrated in the final showdown scene. Picture a gritty, rainy redesign of an old Western movie's final gun fight. It carries both tension and action, which is a rare feat for a single scene and raises the bar for who can't seem to do that. It's a great thing that McQuarrie shows such command of JACK REACHER, because the acting doesn't quite cut it. While Tom Cruise is a best case senario to make Reacher likeable, the talented Rosamund Pike manages to look like a deer in the headlights for two hours. She looks so distressed and helpless, she doesn't manage to muster even a little bit of sensuality for the ladies man, Mr. Reacher. Don't get me started on Werner Herzog's mysterious presence in that movie and his Russian character with an overbearing German accent.
I enjoyed JACK REACHER, but I didn't take it seriously. Not one bit. The source material doesn't deserve to be, unless you suffer from a violent inferiority syndrome and literature it your only emotional outlet. But once you're throwing serious expectations out the window, you'll find a smart, well-shot pulp movie that knows how to get the most out of its medium. You wouldn't believe it's Christopher McQuarrie's second movie's only after WAY OF THE GUN in 2000. There are worse ways you can be introduced to Lee Child's novels and there are definitively worse ways to spend two hours. It's probably the best movie you could do out of questionable source material without openly making fun of it.
* I always thought heartland was the midwest. In the novel, I imagined Indianapolis.
I enjoyed JACK REACHER, but I didn't take it seriously. Not one bit. The source material doesn't deserve to be, unless you suffer from a violent inferiority syndrome and literature it your only emotional outlet. But once you're throwing serious expectations out the window, you'll find a smart, well-shot pulp movie that knows how to get the most out of its medium. You wouldn't believe it's Christopher McQuarrie's second movie's only after WAY OF THE GUN in 2000. There are worse ways you can be introduced to Lee Child's novels and there are definitively worse ways to spend two hours. It's probably the best movie you could do out of questionable source material without openly making fun of it.
* I always thought heartland was the midwest. In the novel, I imagined Indianapolis.
