JACK REACHER
In his 2005 novel One Shot, writer Lee Child lays out nine
rules for surviving a five-against-one alley fight, a challenge his hero, the ex-Army
cop Jack Reacher, is about to face. These include “Be on your feet and ready.” “Identify
the ringleader.” “Don’t break the furniture.” Rule number nine is the most
important: “Don’t run head-on into Jack Reacher. Not when he’s expecting it.
It’s like running into an oak tree.”
As fans of Child’s 17 (and
counting) Reacher novels know, this drifter hero is 6’5”, which means that to
bring an oak of a man to life onscreen, the comparatively diminutive Tom Cruise
(5’7”) would have to overcompensate with some serious tough-guy glowering. That was the
expectation anyway. Instead, when surrounded on a dark Pittsburgh street by
five fools who’ve been paid a hundred bucks each to beat him bloody, Cruise’s
version of Reacher gives a wry “you-asked-for-it” shrug, then puts the five
down. Effortlessly. Convincingly. Cruise is definitely too short for the gig,
but in this first fight, he proves his tough-guy chops. Outraged Reacher
readers can stand down.
Written and directed by
Christopher McQuarrie (co-writer of The
Usual Suspects), Jack Reacher
opens as a sniper is setting up in a car garage directly opposite PNC Park,
home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. In a sequence that calls to mind the cold,
heartless grace of a Brian DePalma (Blow
Out, Dressed To Kill) set piece,
we see what the killer sees, and wince as the rifle scope glides left, right,
and then left again, as that killer chooses, seemingly at random, who will die.
Six shots ring out; five humans fall.
James Barr (Joseph
Sikora), a retired Army sniper, is quickly arrested, but won’t talk, except to
scrawl three words on a sheet of paper: “Get Jack Reacher”. As the detective in
charge (David Oyelowo) and the District Attorney (Richard Jenkins)
wonder aloud why Barr has asked for a
former military policeman who has fallen off the grid, Reacher walks through
the D.A.’s office door. This on-cue entrance is indicative of a jokey tone
McQuarrie maintains throughout the film, as if to let us know that neither he
nor Cruise are taking this lone hero stuff too
seriously.
It turns out that Reacher
despises Barr, but he can’t resist helping Barr’s idealistic defense attorney,
Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike, aces). After retracing the killer’s steps, Reacher
begins having doubts about Barr’s guilt, and once those five thugs come to beat
him senseless, it’s clear that there’s a conspiracy afoot.
Just why the bad guys are
doing what they’re doing remains a bit of a muddle at the end of Jack Reacher. Still, logic is rarely the
point in movies like this (and the novels that inspire them). There’s much to
enjoy here: a goofily funny hallway fight between Reacher and two thugs best
described as “Dumb” and “Way Dumber”; the unlikely sight of revered film
director Werner Herzog (Rescue Dawn; Cave of Forgotten Dreams) portraying an
evil villain who chewed off his own fingers in a Soviet Gulag. And there’s the clear
delight passing between Cruise and his Days
of Thunder co-star Robert Duvall, who ambles into the third act in time to
keep McQuarrie’s relatively light touch from giving way to Reacher’s grim
screw-the-courts brutality.
If none of that works for
you, then obsess over the joy master cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (The Black Stallion) must have taken in bouncing light off Rosamund
Pike’s resplendent blond hair. Should a beat-‘em-up action flick be this
beautiful? Follow the light, Jack, follow the light. (Chuck Wilson)