Jack Reacher (2012)

Though my embargo against Tom Cruise movies was lifted this past summer (I’m not a huge fan of him as a person), Jack Reacher is not a movie that I much cared to see. However, I’m not one to turn down a free movie ticket, so when my family went to the theater today, I was all too happy to give it a chance.

Tom Cruise stars in the title role, Jack Reacher, a former Army Military Police officer – a man who seems to be a mix between Sherlock Holmes and Jason Bourne. His hunches are never wrong, he never loses a fight, and there are no consequences to his actions. The villains in this film are one-dimensional, and, while there is a reason why they do what they do, their motives seem hardly cause for the actions they take.

But I stopped caring about all of the bad parts of this film when I started having too much fun. The character of Jack Reacher is interesting and is made even better by Tom Cruise’s typical charisma. His deadpan delivery of his character in this film provides plenty of laughs, and, despite the fact that he’s 50 years old now, Cruise is still fully capable of playing a convincing action star. Though the action is fun and not overdone, it’s less the action and more the investigative part of the character that made me enjoy this film so much. However improbable it may be, the way Reacher’s mind wraps his mind around everything and draws conclusions is fascinating and is quite enjoyable.

I was prepared to agree with the critics on this one; with a 61% rating over on RottenTomatoes.com, Jack Reacher isn’t as critically-acclaimed as the filmmakers might have hoped. Plus, with the members of my family who have read several of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books – on which this film was based (One Shot, to be specific) – complaining about how unlike the book character Tom Cruise is, I didn’t think I’d care for it…and I was happy to be proven wrong. Robert Duvall makes an entertaining appearance, and Rosemund Pike as Helen Rodin does a fine job, but it’s Tom Cruise doing what Tom Cruise does best that makes Jack Reacher lots of fun and worth the watch. Whether it lines up with the book or not, I cannot say, but it has piqued my interest in the books, which is another positive thing that can be said for it.

-Chad

Rating: 4 (out of 5)

MPAA: PG-13 – for violence, language and some drug material