JACK REACHER

Paramount

Rated PG-13

Running time: 130 Minutes




Click below to watch the Jack Reacher trailer.

 

In Paramount Pictures Jack Reacher, former Army Military Police Officer Tom Cruise investigates the mass shooting that former Army infantry sniper Joseph Sikora is accused of.

Based on the book One Shot written by Lee Child, of which the character Jack Reacher is the protagonist, Cruise works with Sikora's defense attorney Rosamund Pike to get Sikora off - despite the fact that Cruise wants to bury Sikora, since Sikora has had a history of going off as a sniper. The title One Shot refers to the sniper motto - One Shot, One Kill.

I thought that this was a slightly above average crime drama movie, although Cruise was not as funny as I thought he would be in this movie. I kept thinking Cruise would be more like his character in A Few Good Men. Cruise is also much smaller than the big series character of Jack Reacher described in the book One Shot. Being a character who fell off the grid added to Cruise's mystique which helped his character of Jack Reacher since Cruise himself was not that funny.

The car chase scene in the movie unfortunately was pretty average, although Cruise did all of the stunt driving. The only good thing about the car chase was the end of the chase. Robert Duvall was great as the former U.S. Marine that assists Cruise. Duvall's character was the funny character that I had expected Cruise to be. Having District Attorney Richard Jenkins being Pike's father adds to the character dynamics of the film, with them being on opposite sides of the legal system concerning Sikora, as the film was actually fairly predictable otherwise. It is curious that Cruise never went into the military law of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but just dealt outside of the civilian law. I think what I liked best about this movie is that you get to know who the victims of the shooting were and not having the people becoming just bodies.

Sadly, the premier of Jack Reacher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - where the movie was filmed - was cancelled due to the mass shooting of the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting the day before the scheduled premier. What was even scarier to me was that there were shots fired a couple of days later at my local mall, and not from somewhere across the country.

Rated PG-13 for violence, language, and sexual situations.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

Pancho's Movie Reviews