Predicted Rating: 3 Stars
Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects, Valkyrie). Starring: Tom Cruise (Top Gun, Mission: Impossible), Rosamund Pike (Wrath of the Titans) and Robert Duvall (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now).
The film kicks off with a lone sniper gunning down 5 seemingly innocent, unrelated people in broad daylight.Whilst allegedly in protective custody, the accused shooter, James Barr, is brutally bashed into a coma, however beforehand he asks for one thing, Jack Reacher (Cruise). Reacher is an ex army officer who has been drifting around the country essentially unsighted for years. Upon his arrival, the defense lawyer of Barr, Helen Rodan, enlists the help of Reacher to help her acquit her client.
This movie seemed really confused. Not sexually, but with it's feel, what it was all about. It was violent, but not really that violent, funny but not really that funny. The violence factor is a defining moment for the movie. There are a lot of people drawing comparisons with the sniper scene to the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook, something that is hurting the credibility of the production. That scene is really not that violent and I have seen much more up front similar scenes. Another scene that reiterated the violence shambles was a scene where, to show his dedication to his life, the fallen gangster had to chew his own fingers off, just as the main villain had done in the past, or be killed. Now in my personal opinion, the impact of the scene would have been far greater if he did chew off his fingers, and then get shot anyway. Instead he just gets shot. With the humour, the writer threw in a few funny jokes but they seemed to be hidden and skipped over. I will use an analogy I experienced recently to emphasize my point. I was giving a presentation at work where I threw a few jokes in. Halfway through I realised the mood of the audience was not as free wheeling as I anticipated. As a result I skipped over a joke. At the end of the presentation, one of the audience members asked me why I decided to exclude the joke because he thought it was quite funny and appropriate. So I learned a valuable lesson that day, the same which can be applied for this movie, if you have a good joke, make sure you accentuate it.
Despite it's fast paced, forever changing plot, the thing that confused me the most was the status of some of the characters. I am not sure if it was the performance of Cruise, who was quite good I thought, but Reacher just seemed too Bond like. He was trying to be too suave but not really pulling it off. Everything he did seemed to be perfect, even down to his attackers completely missing him with crowbars and baseball bats on numerous occasions. Then there was the lawyer. She seemed to normal, and quite frankly boring. She needed to be the stereotypical character, with Reacher being unique, in order to distinguish this film from series like Bond and Bourne. Either have her as the ditsy damsel in distress that needs to be rescued all of the time, or the head strong mature girl that fixes all of Reacher's mistakes. Unfortunately she was a bit of both and a bit of neither. Finally, and most importantly, she needed to fall head over heals in love with Reacher. There are inklings of this occurring but in the end she forgets all about this and he goes on his merry ways whilst she is left to clean up the mess
Speaking of the plot, it was fairly solid. There was a good starting point, plenty of twists of turns and an ending that leaves you wanting more. One criticism was that every thing seemed to perfect. There was not one mistake made my anyone, and as Homer once quoted when he was made aware of the whereabouts of a once missing Maude Flanders "Well everything is wrapped up in a neat little package." One thing I really liked was the car chase. Not because it was unbelievably epic, but the cars handled like they would handle in real life. The Audi, driven by the enemy, moved around the corners with relative ease, whilst the Camaro, driven by Reacher, handled like an American muscle cars, powersliding around every corner and seemingly moments from spinning out.
I am not sure if it was on purpose, or anyone else noticed, but I saw something that was a massive gaff on the part of the editors. District Attorney Alex Rodan (Richard Jenkins) was discussing the case with his daughter, Helen Rodan. Half way through a sentence, you hear a car drive by in the background. Jenkins pauses, seems to lose his place, then resume with the conversation. Now, here you would expect this to be a plot device with the car coming into play and say, attempting to gun down either of the characters. However nothing. What the hell. If I picked this up, surely you would have at the time and yelled cut and restart the scene. If not it would have been picked up in the editing room and cut out. Who knows, maybe the car was part of the scene but it was cut for one reason or another. Look out for it if you watch it and let me know if you saw the same to make sure I am not going crazy.
The big question is, as there is an extensive series of books, will there be an extensive film series. The short answer is no, the long answer is I doubt we will even see one sequel. I was predicting this movie to be the first box office flop of the year, with comparisons drawn to Sandy Hook and other big draw cards such as Les Mis and The Hobbit, people might be reluctant to see it. However I have just looked it up and it seems to have made it's money back, just though. Still, this is a decent film but I would probably wait to see it on DVD, it would make a good I can't be bothered doing anything else Saturday night movie
Overall Rating: Confused not confusing 3 Stars
Next Time; Ah the choices. Three fantastic movies out Thursday, Paranorman, Hitchcock and Gangster Squad. I also haven't seen Les Mis or Wreck it Ralph either so it all depends what mood I am in.
By the way, a perfect candidate for Rule 34 called Jack Reaches Around
Jack dry reaches.
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