2 Stars (out of four)
I will first start this off by saying the movie is not that bad in the sense that it is enjoyable to watch. That said, the movie promises much, but delivers little of its promise. Tom Cruise plays Jack Reacher, an ex-Army investigative cop who seems to have trained in every tactical discipline ever. It starts out in Pittsburg where an ex-Army sniper randomly guns down five people in broad daylight, leaves a ton of evidence behind, and is caught shortly thereafter. All the evidence leads than open and shut case straight to death row, or does it? While the sniper is in custody, he asks for Jack Reacher, the investigator who once caught him murdering in Iraq and who is now a ghost off the grid. What follows is a confusing mishmash of characters and events, none of which are particularly well explained in their motivations and raisin d'être for being in the movie in the first place. While the possibility of a hidden motive nestled among seemingly random murders is interesting, it is never particularly compelling because anyone with half a brain for picking up clues can guess the motive in about 20 minutes. After that, it is a pretty straightforward, by the numbers murder mystery, with a not quite so surprise ending.
This movie is all Cruise. Not a surprise considering he produces and stars in it. But what is odd is that he has played good guys (almost everything he's done), and bad guys (Taps, Collateral). But I don't think has ever played the mysterious stranger who does bad things to set the situation right. While this has been a winning formula from everything from The Lone Ranger, to The Green Hornet, to Batman, to The Untouchables, to Death Wish, to Dirty Harry and almost all of Clint Eastwood's westerns, it doesn't work very well here. This is not the lawless west where a good man was needed to battle the immoral baddies. This is modern day Pittsburg that ostensibly has primo law enforcement force. The motive, outside of greed, is not evident in the chief crazy villain, played by crazy director Werner Hertzog. He is supposed to be scary bad, but we don't know exactly what for. He pulls the strings in a puppet master kind of way, but we don't know what he has done in the past to deserve such a rep. At one point, a grizzled, old former marine played by Robert Duvall shows up to help, but we don't know why he would do that. There is a frosty relationship with Cruise's partner, a lawyer played by Rosamund Pike (whose chief function in this film seems to be exposition and showing off her ample breasts and cleavage under low cut suits) and her father who is the Pittsburg DA that doesn't really go anywhere and isn't really explained. There are bad guys who come in and out of the picture with no real logic.
In the end, this is a stew of a lot of other, better films. I read the glowing review by Pete Travers who says this is a great show at the seedy underworld. Other films have done it better, like: Pulp Fiction, Drive, 8mm, Reservoir Dogs, The Killing, Hard Core, The Warriors, and many others. It tries to be a vigilante film like The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Seven Samurai, The Punisher, Dirty Harry and others. It tries to be a police murder investigation like Insomnia, Basic Instinct and it tries to be a lawyer/family drama like Class Action and The Verdict. Ultimately, it falls short on all counts. It is neither thrilling, suspenseful, mysterious or dramatic, although it tries for all of them at once. Ultimately, it is a quaintly entertaining, fairly dumb movie. Wait for it on DVD. Is it worth watching? Sure, but not before crossing other movies off your list.
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