Three stars. Rating: PG-13, for violence, profanity, fleeting nudity and some drug content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.2.13
Director/scripter Christopher
McQuarrie’s Jack Reacher is a serviceable thriller: standard-issue Hollywood
suspense, with Tom Cruise delivering his usual charm while working his way through
a murder mystery that unfolds with the customary blend of plot twists, car
chases, gunplay and bare-knuckle fist fights.
In other words, a reasonably
diverting way to spend two hours.
That said, fans of Lee Child’s
Jack Reacher novels will hate this film. With good cause.
His star wattage notwithstanding,
Cruise is wrong for the role. Reacher is, quite famously, 6 feet 5 inches tall;
he sports a 50-inch chest, weighs between 210 and 250 pounds, and has hands
“like two supermarket chickens.” When Reacher chooses to attack a thug, the
impact — to borrow from Child’s prose — is akin having a mountain fall on the
guy.
Cruise is 5 feet 7 and might hit
170, dripping wet. To say he lacks Reacher’s all-essential physical presence is
gross understatement.
At one point during this film, as
investigating police are trying to determine whether Reacher is staying at a
particular motel, the desk clerk immediately suggests a specific room,
insisting they “couldn’t miss this guy.” That line might have made sense in the
book, when describing the actual Reacher; it’s a daft bit of dialogue here,
when referencing Cruise.
During the months leading up to
this film’s release, Child — well aware of the casting controversy — made the
magazine and talk-show rounds, attempting peremptory damage control. He pointed
out that Reacher has three salient characteristics: He’s always the smartest
guy in the room; he’s still and quiet, yet menacing; and he’s huge. Child quite
reasonably pointed out that Hollywood inevitably is about compromise, and that
getting two of out three should be acceptable.
Fair enough, and yes: Cruise’s
Reacher moves stealthily, even when at rest, and he radiates an intriguing aura
of latent menace. And yes, he always seems to be the smartest guy in the room.
But that’s only because most of
the other people in the room, in this film, are idiots.
And that’s this film’s biggest
disappointment: worse, even, than Cruise’s grandstanding insistence that he can too beat up five guys without even breathing hard. (One cannot help snickering,
during the opening credits, at the initial line that insists this film is “a
Tom Cruise production.” No kidding.)
Child writes smart and
ferociously clever novels, and this adaptation is neither.
Which is an even bigger mystery
than the one at the center of this storyline, because McQuarrie won a
well-deserved Academy Award for writing 1995’s impressively twisty The Usual
Suspects, which remains a benchmark of ingenious cinematic suspense. The
casting of Cruise may have angered fans, but McQuarrie’s involvement felt
inspired.
How tragic, then, that McQuarrie
takes every opportunity to dumb-down Child’s tightly plotted novel, ruining or
eliminating numerous “reveals” while turning Reacher into little more than a
standard-issue blunt instrument.
Consider, as Exhibit A, a scene
when Reacher tracks a no-account opponent — the leader of the aforementioned
five guys — back to the ramshackle home he shares with his mother. In Child’s One Shot, the novel on which this film is marginally based, Reacher’s
subsequent conversation with this forlorn woman is illuminating, even tragic,
for what it reveals about her, and her relationship with her wayward son.
OK, fine; that’s unnecessary
exposition in this cinematic context. But was it really necessary to transform
this encounter into another assault on Reacher, with two goons surprising him —
which would, needless to say, never happen — and then blowing their advantage
by knocking each other senseless with (respectively) a clumsily wielded crowbar
and baseball bat?
Honestly, the scene plays more
like an outtake from a Three Stooges short. It’s absolutely ludicrous, and
apparently present only so that Cruise can earn a chuckle by peering warily
over the lip of the bathtub that, by sheer chance, has saved his ass.
No, no, no.
This isn’t an adaptation of a Lee
Child novel; it’s a Tom Cruise vanity production very much in the mold of
2010’s equally silly Knight and Day. Since we know McQuarrie can do much
better, we can assume that Cruise wielded ultimate control and shaped Child’s
novel according to his own desires.
I guess we shouldn’t be
surprised, but the disappointment is palpable.
Things begin chillingly —
particularly given recent real-world events — as a sniper calmly executes five
random citizens strolling along an attractive Pittsburgh waterfront park; the
killer then vanishes. The case falls to police detective Emerson (David
Oyelowo), whose team methodically processes a wealth of forensic evidence that
leads, fairly quickly, to James Barr (Joseph Sikora).
Confronted by both Emerson and
Rodin (Richard Jenkins), a district attorney who only takes slam-dunk cases,
Barr surprises them with a request that they find Reacher. Jack, at ease in
Miami, has learned of the killing spree via TV news; he obligingly arrives in Pittsburgh
just as Emerson and Rodin have realized that Reacher lives totally off the grid
and can't be found ... unless he wishes otherwise.
As it happens, though, Reacher
has little interest in helping Barr, much to the dismay of defense attorney
Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike), who has taken this high-profile case in part to
spite her father. Reacher knows Barr from their service days in Kuwait, when
the latter was a military-trained sniper who snapped and killed four American
soldiers; the case was hushed up only because the victims turned out to be serial
rapists. Rather than risk the public censure, the U.S. government buried the
case and freed Barr.
Reacher, the military
investigator who put that case together, warned Barr that he dare not step out
of line again ... or else.
Reacher therefore would seem the
last person Barr would want in town ... so why make that request? Helen can’t
figure it out, and although Reacher initially intends to leave after confirming
that the cops have an airtight case, she correctly deduces that this core
question will eat at him, as well.
And after Reacher finds himself
in the middle of such a blatantly contrived attempt to “discourage” him with a
five-way beating, he knows somebody else is pulling the strings. At which point
... game on.
The always effervescent Pike
deftly navigates her intricate role, as Helen initially trusts Reacher but then
begins to wonder if his increasingly elaborate conspiracy theory is no more
than the fanciful ravings of a social misfit. And yet there’s no denying the
growing physical attraction, and one of McQuarrie’s best-staged scenes occurs
in Reacher’s motel room, as Helen’s close proximity becomes combustible.
Pike also shines during an
encounter with one of the victim’s grieving family members: a scene that seems
benign but suddenly, unexpectedly, turns scary.
Robert Duvall pops up in the
third act as Cash, a former U.S. Marine who owns a shooting range where Barr
practiced his craft. Cash’s part is greatly expanded from that in the novel, to
take advantage of Duvall’s engaging presence; he delivers a feisty performance
that brings greater snap to the film’s climax.
Oyelowo doesn’t leave much of an
impression as Emerson, although he shares one good scene with Cruise, when the
cop challenges Reacher on his memory. Famed German filmmaker Werner Herzog plays
a nasty, shadowy figure known only as The Zec; Jai Courtney (recognized from
TV’s Spartacus) is memorably cold-blooded as Charlie, who soon becomes a
persistent thorn in Reacher’s side.
Alexia Fast makes the most of a
small part as Sandy, a sultry little vixen with unfortunate taste in men.
Much of this story takes place at
night, with Pittsburgh’s mean streets given an additional veneer of menace by
veteran cinematographer Caleb Deschanel.
But while the film’s climax
certainly is exciting and cathartic, McQuarrie takes the plot in an entirely
different direction ... and not a very satisfying one. The so-called answers
aren’t sufficiently linked to earlier events, which results in an odd paradox:
Viewers are more likely to follow the plot if they’ve read Child’s novel ...
even though McQuarrie changes so many key details.
All in all, not a very auspicious
cinematic debut for Jack Reacher. Sadly, the source novel’s title — One Shot — may be a prophetic indication of this character’s big-screen lifespan.
3 comments:
I have the same casting conundrum with Clancy's Clark character. William De Foe was dead wrong for the character in "Clear and Present". The guy in "Sum of all Fears" had the character, but not the physical characteristics.
Out of curiosity, who Would you have cast for Reacher?
An excellent question, and one I've given quite a bit of thought. I came up with two answers, both much closer than Cruise. First is Liam Neeson, who demonstrated the right level of smarts and savage fury in "Taken." He's 6 foot 4 and was an amateur boxer earlier in life. He has Reacher's size, intelligence and physical presence. The only downside is that, at 60, he's too old for the part ... although I think he still passes, Hollywood-style, for late 40s. A better choice, I think, is Jim Caviezel, currently displaying precisely the proper blend of intelligence and physical presence on television's "Person of Interest." He's 6 foot 2, looks powerful and has the "quiet" bearing that Reacher displays. (So does Neeson.) And, at 44, Caviezel is closer to the correct age. Finally, both these actors are good choices in the "Hollywood sense" that demanded some sort of star in a project of this magnitude. Neither has Cruise's level of fame, to be sure, but since this film's $64.7 million gross (as of January 6) qualifies it as a failure -- given the $60 million budget -- I rather doubt it would have done worse with Neeson or Caviezel at the helm...
Having no acquaintance with the source novels I waded into Tom Cruise's interpretation of Jack Reacher completely unaware of the shortcomings in physical presence Cruise brought to the project. And I really liked the result. I thought Cruise brought a suitably intense detachment and cold blooded intellectuality to the pursuit of the truth to the film. That having been said, I do agree with you that Jim Caviezel would make a much better choice.
Rosamund Pike was perfect and, as you noted, Robert Duvall brought great energy to his role and really helped propel the film to it's climax. Most importantly, the villains, Werner Herzog and Jai Courtney were delightfully menacing. I thought Herzog's description of what he did to survive in Siberia solidly set the tone for the rest of this little morality tale. He was chilling.
All in all, I found Jack Reacher to be a better than average Tom Cruise effort. Admittedly, due to the quality of the actors surrounding him but better nonetheless.
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