Now I must admit, I'm not too familiar with the Jack Reacher books (I guess I need to do some more reading!) So I'm going into this film blind to it's source material, which hopefully means I might be able to appreciate the filmmaking?!
Jack Reacher opens with a brutal and methodical sniper attack on five seemingly innocent civilians. The sniper, Barr (Joseph Sikora) is quickly apprehended by the Police and taken into custody. It is here that Barr simply says, "Get Jack Reacher." Reacher (Tom Cruise) is a military man who has decided to keep himself on the down low after his military service and almost take himself off the radar. He soon joins Helen (Rosamund Pike), Barr's Attorney who is convinced that he is innocent and wants to bring justice to the innocent victims. It's a tough line to walk though, as Helen soon starts to insult the victims' families and her father, Rodin (Richard Jenkins) is soon telling her that she needs to step down and just let Barr take the rap for what he's seemingly done. Meanwhile, Reacher is on the run from Emerson (David Oyelowo) and the rest of the Police force as they think that he is involved with even more murders taking place. However, the web of deceit is soon looking very tangled as Reacher and Helen soon realise that someone who is on their side is actually on the enemy's side.
To give it credit, Jack Reacher is a film that is fully developed into it's own tight-knit thriller that never really lets it's pace slow down and doesn't feel part of a 'larger picture' where the film studio and/or Director (Christopher McQuarrie) have held stuff back for the sequel. Sure, the character of Jack Reacher is quite mysterious and we don't learn too much about him, but I think it just adds to his mystery because he was someone who chose to take himself off the map and live a quiet life. It would have been a lot of heavy exposition if we were to learn his entire backstory.
However, on the other hand, while Jack Reacher is a mysterious character, Helen feels underdeveloped and completely overacted by Rosamund Pike. While I feel like I should be bigging-up a British actress who is making it 'big' across the pond, I couldn't get past her hammy facial expressions she was pulling when she was supposed to be shocked or her big wide-eyed face she kept pulling. It's a shame, because obviously there was supposed to be some kind of sexual tension between her and Jack Reacher, but it was just completely lost with Pike's B-movie acting.
It's funny, because when I first saw the trailer for Jack Reacher, I immediately thought this was going to be a film inspired by the excellent Drive, when in fact the two films have very little in common. To be honest, Jack Reacher is actually more like the recent dud, Alex Cross, but the two films couldn't be anymore different in how they were executed. While Alex Cross felt more like a cheap TV production with lots of slow down-time, Jack Reacher had well-timed action, a compelling crime conspiracy plot and some well executed comedy (keep an eye out for the scene where Reacher is searching the house of one of the suspects and he has to dispatch of two or three henchmen.)
But enough of the comparisons, because in all fairness Jack Reacher shouldn't be compared to an inferior film. While on the whole it is well-paced, the two hour plus run-time did feel a little bit excessive at times. I think the main problems with that came with the third act battle when Reacher needs to save Helen from the clutches of the evil villain, The Zec (Werner Herzog) who was the mastermind behind the whole sniper plot. There's a twist which is quite obvious from the start that was drawn out for a very long time and then a final fight scene between Reacher and one of Zec's right-hand men, Charlie (Jai Courtney) which felt a little underwhelming.
Even though Jack Reacher has it's flaws, it is definitely one of the better crime thrillers of the year. I can't wait for any further Reacher adaptations that needs to have Tom Cruise back and the 'bigger, faster, bloodier' mindset of many sequels.
****/*****
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