MOVIE REVIEW - Jack Reacher

One of the more eyebrow raising movies of the Christmas season is out this week, as Tom Cruise stars in Jack Reacher.

Jack Reacher is a series of books that many have read, and now have come to the big screen.   There has been a ton of "are you kidding me's", with the casting of Cruise as the lead character.   Purists will be quick to point out that Reacher in the books, is a hulking 6'4" ex-military cop.   Cruise of course is about a foot shorter than that.  But when you produce this movie as Cruise did here, you can cast yourself.  And he did.  That's been said.

Reacher is a very interesting character in his development.  Reacher is ex-army.  He has been decorated with about every single award you can think of.  He did about everything in the army that one could, include being a military cop.   Now, Reacher is a ghost of a man, who has left the army, and dropped off the radar socially in about every way possible.  Reacher does not care about the law,  or pretty much anything else, except what is right.

He is an interesting mix vigilante, genius detective, but is still military tough.  He is James Bond-ish of sorts as he is good at about everything, but does not wear a tux while doing it.  In this movie, he whisks in from out of nowhere, to help a beautiful young attorney Helen (Rosamund Pike) solve a crime.  Seems an army veteran sniper shot a bunch of people in broad daylight in Pittsburgh, and Reacher starts to dig deep to see what really happened and who really did it. And why.  The police investigation has been far too tidy, and easy.  Reacher hears of the story, and moves in to find out the real truth.

This movie is proof positive that Hollywood can make a very good action flick, that deals with some tough subject matter and not make it go over the top.  There is violence here, but it's tempered and all of it is central to the story.  There is humor, and there is some real nice irony, and a few really solid plot twists that make this entertaining. Toss in a dynamite chase scene and Jack Reacher is pretty darn good.  This movie also turns into sort of a "damsel in distress" movie, that turns Reacher into a hero, and that's hard not to like.   But you've got to be able to get past Cruise in this role.  If you can't, you may be dismissing this out-of-hand, and not going anyway.

Despite how you may feel about Cruise in this kind of role, where he beats up 5 guys at at time in one scene,  3 in another, and is not the Reacher that the fans know, he does hold his own.  I am not a huge Cruise fan, but I will give him props when it's deserved.   After a couple of decades of overacting and being a parody of himself on and off the set, Cruise has become far more tolerable on screen lately. 

But as big of a role as this is for him, the real story here is Rosamund Pike.  She is terrific as the buxom beauty, Helen who is an aggressive attorney and at times owns the screen.  She is so very different than many other leading women, she was brilliantly cast. They did not need a household name as Helen, but someone of this ilk.  And she is great.  She is a star on the rise with countless projects in the works well into 2014. She could be the next big deal. Her style is very different than most, she really cuts through.   I first saw here in the ill-conceived, Wrath Of the Titans, but everyone's got to get noticed.  Better things are head for her.

Jack Reacher.  Overall, this is a holiday hit. And there will be more of them.