JACK REACHER (2012)

Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Cast: Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, David Oyelowo, Richard Jenkins, Alexia Fast, Robert Duvall, Jai Courtney, Werner Herzog
RunTime: 2 hrs 10 mins
Released By: UIP
Rating: PG13 (Brief Coarse Language And Some Violence)
Official Website: http://www.jackreachermovie.com/

Opening Day: 20 December 2012 

Synopsis: Six shots. Five dead. One heartland city thrown into a state of terror. But within hours the cops have it solved: a slam-dunk case. Except for one thing. The accused man says: You got the wrong guy. Then he says: Get Reacher for me. And sure enough, ex–military investigator Jack Reacher is coming. He knows this shooter—a trained military sniper who never should have missed a shot. Reacher is certain something is not right—and soon the slam-dunk case explodes. Now Reacher is teamed with a beautiful young defense lawyer, moving closer to the unseen enemy who is pulling the strings. Reacher knows that no two opponents are created equal. This one has come to the heartland from his own kind of hell. And Reacher knows that the only way to take him down is to match his ruthlessness and cunning—and then beat him shot for shot.

Movie Review:

The idea that Jack Reacher attended the same detective school as Sherlock Holmes is hard to shake. Both have the near mystical ability to replay terrifyingly accurate flashbacks of a crime, an impressive tendency to uncover clues that everyone else has missed and impeccable skills in hand-to-hand combat. But it’s safe to assume that Jack Reacher isn’t simply a poltergeist of Sherlock Holmes. Where the latter has caustic wit and a welcoming demeanour, Jack Reacher has cold seriousness and rough-hewn mannerisms. Which is about all it takes to tell you why Jack Reacher isn’t nearly as fun to watch as Sherlock Holmes, though that is hardly any of this movie’s faults.

Jack Reacher, the brainchild of British novelist Lee Child and the protagonist in 17 novels so far, is a celebrated veteran soldier and a former military police investigator trained to kill. An adaptation of Child’s 2005 novel One Shot, Reacher’s big screen debut involves him with a suspect accused of sniping five seemingly random people. Feeling that the suspect has been framed, Reacher decides to team up with the accused’s defense lawyer. As he digs deeper into the mystery, he discovers a secret that could endanger the lives of everyone involved. Reacher now has to find the real killer before he gets to him and take the lives of those around him.

Like any good detective drama, Jack Reacher sidesteps viewers at just about every turn. Tom Cruise grounds his performance in as much cloying confidence and swagger as one could ever need to make seemingly shocking and inane speculation look like the most educated guesses. It’s this confidence that carries through to scenes featuring more physical work. Not famous for having the most challenging height in Hollywood, and certainly not for fitting the 1.96m stature of Child’s literary creation, Cruise has had his fair share of naysayers, but here he proves that it’s the spirit of the character that really counts. Drowning his finger in the eye socket of an enemy with methodical calmness, Cruise shows that he has made Reacher his for years to come.

Yet if any future Reacher movie is to be made, better informed creative liberties have to be taken with the source material. The movie is almost starved of the necessary complexity to make it work wonders, chief of which is the motivation of Reacher’s arch nemesis The Zec, here being muddied at best and non-existent at worst. Likewise, Reacher never reveals how he became a Bruce Wayne wannabe, but that may be partly due to the decision to adapt the 9th book in the series rather than the 1st. Even if there’s text in the novel pertaining to said worries, it has sadly been left on the cutting room floor.

The biggest problem, however, is Jack Reacher isn’t that entertaining to watch afterall. Barring a protracted car chase with the police and a bar fight against five henchmen, the movie is woefully restrained, trapped in a tangled web of practicality and the cutting combat efficiency that Reacher abides to. Whereas Sherlock Holmes invites his opponents to test his repertoire of fighting skills, Reacher seems almost too afraid to get into trouble and is content to take down his opponent in as few moves as possible. To be sure, it’s a great survival strategy, but there’s little in the form excitement for the audience.

Movie Rating:

(A decent first effort in adapting Jack Reacher for the big screen, but future Reacher movies could use more complexity and less restrained action)

Review by Loh Yong Jian