Movie Review: 'Jack Reacher' can handle the truth

Snipers and gunmen gone amok; they’re such a problem in the US.

While there’s always Virginia Tech, Columbine and the Sandy Hook (which incidentally delayed the US theatrical release of this movie) massacres to hold up as highlights in the argument for better gun control, this movie takes its cue from the 1966 University of Texas shootings--the one where former Marine sniper Charles Whitman climbed the observation deck of a campus tower and shot 16 students.

The movie opens the same way: an unknown man in a white van drives to the top of a parking garage and shoots people across the way, at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park stadium.

The scene is tense and horrific. When we zoom out from the claustrophobic confines of the reticle scope, six shots have been fired randomly. Five people are dead. Among them is a nanny with a child, a businessman sitting at a park bench, and a single mother who we later learn had just bought tickets fort the upcoming ball game for her pre-teen boy.

The man drives away. He even paid for his parking meter.



Get the sniper!

The guy in the white van is easy to find. He’s James Barr, a former Army sharpshooter with a prior history of unsanctioned wartime shootings. Police raid his house and find all the equipment he could have used, including a small workshop for making bullets and the rifle.

Looks like a clean wrap-up, until they ask him to confess. On the pad he scribbles a single message: “Get Jack Reacher.”

Enter our titular hero. And so begins a whodunit investigation done in big strokes of camp and noir in one glorious mash-up of Tom Cruise overacting.

It’s important to note that this movie was previously titled “One Shot” from the same book by Lee Childs, who in turn has authored a series of other thriller books that star the decorated ex-military man turned drifter Mr. Reacher. In those books Reacher is described as having ice-blue eyes and dirty blond hair, is 6' 5" tall with a 50-inch chest, and weighing, oh, around 210 and 250 pounds.

So, definitely not Tom Cruise, hey?

 
Similarly important is that Cruise's starring role had Child’s blessing, saying in one of the pre-production interviews that “Reacher's size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way. . . With another actor you might get 100% of the height but only 90% of Reacher. With Tom, you'll get 100% of Reacher with 90% of the height."

In the same way that Cruise proved his worth by playing the vampire Lestat (tall, blond, and psychotic) in the movie adaptation of “Interview with the Vampire,” he sure brings plum physicality and grit to THIS role (tall, blond, and anti-social).

I wish I was kidding, but the big grin plastered on all our faces as we watched Cruise run, gun, and Kali his way through this investigative romp is an undeniable sign that we had a great time.

The camp and the Cruise

So what’s the difference?

The campiness; the self-aware, tongue-in-cheek tone and nudging, knowing winks at the audience that makes this film such a delight, like when Cruise acquired the “M:I” franchise but without the bombast of crucial world-saving through his HK wirework acrobatics. Plus, the hand-to-hand combat scenes are way nastier.

There’s a ton of them peppered throughout the CSI-toned meanderings as Reacher helps to clear the name of Barr. Eventually, it leads him to uncover evidence that those five random people shot at the park by a sniper maybe weren’t so random after all.

Director Christopher McQuarrie strikes camp gold in a conversation between Reacher and Barr’s embattled lawyer Helen Rodin (former Bond Girl Rosamund Pike who sounds goofy sporting a Pennsylvanian accent and not a British one). After we’re shown how uncomfortable she is as Reacher discusses the case shirtless, she finally exhorts: “Can you please put a shirt on?!” And Reacher shows her why he can’t by holding up the shirt he’s just washed of blood.

In one of the many Reacher-versus-multiple bad guys scenes, a bunch of thugs corners him inside a house, and he’s forced into the small toilet. Problem is, the room’s way too small and Reacher is forced to take shelter inside the bathtub, as the attack turns from nasty into an absurd Three Stooges suburban slapstick routine with tire jacks and baseball bats. The two thugs are so enthusiastic in beating up Reacher that they trip all over themselves, hit each other accidentally, and by some lucky slip leaves our hero generally unscathed.

My hands down fave is the phone ransom scene where Reacher calls the lawyer (Rosamund Pike) and the mob guy answers. I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s good advice not to be drinking any soda after the midway point. I tell you, it’s like the pulps and a Pinoy movie baked just right.

The '80s, without the mullets

Oh, and this one stars Robert Duvall (as redneck, gun store-owner Cash) as well as Werner Herzog (as mob boss The Zec) in superb supporting roles. Props to whoever did the casting here.



Though it scores aces in pacing, one of the low points in this movie is the plot and narrative. The suspense, the revelations, and the unfolding of the origami in a whodunit is so important and so far the film (though its tone is like a flawless wolf whistle) can only go so far up as to invite comparisons to '80s puzzle thrillers like “Basic,” “Training Day,” or maybe more aptly “The General’s Daughter.”

Things just don’t slot together as neatly when you think about it post-viewing. Let’s stop there lest '80s celluloid aficionados figure out where this is going and cry out against the spoilers.

Nevertheless, it’s a shame that this one got glossed over and dropped from the US holiday box office because of “The Hobbit.” It’s a long one (at almost two hours) but it’s something truly worth the popcorn and the sit-through. Just like in “Top Gun,” Mr. Cruise’s lavish acting style here finds a pitch-perfect aria of an action movie where the anti-hero is all American and all old school man.

Think Cruise can deliver gratifying, smart action on this one? Let me quote Reacher himself "That's for damn sure." – YA, GMA News

"Jack Reacher" is now showing in all Metro Manila theaters.

All photos courtesy of UIP/Solar