Movie Review: Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher

Karen Ballard/Paramount Pictures

Jai Courtney battling Tom Cruise in "Jack Reacher."

Who are you, Mister? a young woman asks Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise), and its a question that recurs, not always quite so politely, throughout the movie that bears Reachers name. He may be an elusive individual with a sketchy background ex-military, no fixed address, a single shirt to his name but as an archetype he is easy enough to recognize. He is a cousin of Shane and Caine (from the old Kung Fu television series) and Clint Eastwoods Man With No Name: a paladin without portfolio who travels from town to town, dispensing righteous violence and hard-boiled aphorisms.

Its just what guys like me do, Reacher says wearily at one point, thoug! h he could say it at just about any point.

Guys like him are mythical creatures, fantasy figures who dispense rough justice when civic institutions fail. Part comic-book superhero, part Old West vigilante and wholly preposterous, Reacher is far less enigmatic than he or anyone else in the movie thinks he is. And also less interesting.

Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie and adapted from One Shot, the ninth in Lee Childs series of macho best sellers, Jack Reacher brings its hero to Pittsburgh, where a sniper has just shot down five innocent people, including a nanny accompanying a small child, in broad daylight. The suspected shooter (Joseph Sikora) lies in a coma after scrawling Get Jack Reacher on a pad in lieu of a confession with a seemingly airtight case against him. Shell casings, fingerprints at the scene, security-camera video, all the usual stuff that disciplined television crime-show viewers will recognize as solid circumstantial evidence.

But the mans lawyer, Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike), hires Reacher anyway, possibly because she thinks he might keep her client off death row, and possibly because she, like every other woman in (and presumably beyond) the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is made weak in the knees by Reachers off-the-charts sexual magnetism.

Helen al! so has some daddy issues, mainly that her daddy (Richard Jenkins) is the district attorney prosecuting the presumed killer. He and the lead detective on the case (David Oyelowo) are obviously too sure of themselves to be trusted, and even before we meet a character known as the Zec (Werner Herzog, whose casting raises a brief film-geek frisson) we know that the poor fellow in the coma is a patsy. We also know, just because of the kind of guy Jack Reacher is, that the body count is sure to rise.

And so Jack Reacher lumbers through a series of beatings, shootings and bludgeonings on its way to a climactic, not terribly surprising showdown. There is a pretty good car chase and a lot of very bad dialogue. Mr. McQuarrie, on his second outing as a director (his screenplays include The Usual Suspects and Valkyrie), seems more suited to action scenes than to the ostensibly simpler task of filming people talking. Nearly every conversation is stilted and lame, laden with the kind of repartee that might strike you as witty if you had no sense of humor.

The self-confident, supercompetent Reacher is a character Mr. Cruise could play in his sleep, which is pretty much what he does. Ms. Pike seems a bit more agitated, perhaps because she is too refined an actress for the kind of pulpy sincerity the movie requires. She tries very hard to make sense of Helens emotions and motives, which is a hopeless task, since the character is an inexplicable collage of empathy, ambition and neediness, on hand t! o awaken ! Reachers chivalrous impulses and to quiver with confused desire whenever he is in the room.

Apart from the car chase, the only real fun in Jack Reacher comes from Mr. Herzog and Robert Duvall, called in near the end for some marvelously gratuitous scenery chewing as a gruff former Marine. They enliven the movies atmosphere of weary brutality for a few moments, but they also call attention to the dullness of their dramatic surroundings.

Jack Reacher is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Violence and some swearing.

Jack Reacher

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie; based on the novel One Shot by Lee Child; director of photography, Caleb Deschanel; edited by Kevin Stitt; music by Joe Kraemer; production design by James Bissell; costumes by Susan Matheson; produced by Tom Cruise, Don Granger, Paula Wagner and Gary Levinsohn; released by Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.

WITH: Tom Cruise (Jack Reacher), Rosamund Pike (Helen Rodin), Richard Jenkins (District Attorney Rodin), David Oyelowo (Detective Emerson), Werner Herzog (the Zec), Jai Courtney (Charlie), Joseph Sikora (Barr), Alexia Fast (Sandy) and Robert Duvall (Cash).