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Thread: Jack Reacher

  1. #1
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    Jack Reacher

    Jack Reacher – Directed and Written by Christopher McQuarrie

    A man enters a parking garage and moments later, seemingly guns down five innocent people. A swat team led by investigator Detective Emerson (David Oyelowo – who also appears in “Lincoln”) finds enough evidence to track the killer down. They burst into his home, find corroborating evidence and arrest him. During his initial interrogation, Emerson offers the man a chance to confess. He gives him paper and pen and instead of a confession, he writes: “Get Jack Reacher.”

    So opens the latest film from Tom Cruise, reunited with the studio that brought him so much fame and fortune – Paramount Studios. Based on a story written by Jim Grant, whose pen name Lee Child has produced no less than 17 Jack Reacher novels and vaulted him to numerous awards and accolades for that accomplishment. Child, who began writing in England for Granada television working on such series as “Brideshead Revisted,” “Jewel in the Crown,” “Prime Suspect,” and others, was subsequently let go in restructuring and decided to write a novel based on an ex-military man more interested in justice than following the rules. His first novel, “Killing Floor,” was such a success, Child went on to write sixteen more murder/mystery novels based on the character and gained a huge fan base in the process. When it came time to translate his first novel to the screen, it was decided by the producers to choose his ninth book in the series, “One Shot.” The screenplay is nearly a verbatim condensation of the novel (Initially adapted by Josh Olson, McQuarrie wrote the final screenplay and took sole credit. He also penned “Valkyrie,” another Cruise film, and won an Oscar for “The Usual Suspects” ). Although Jack Reacher is described in the novels as a man who is six foot five inches tall, Child actually approved of Cruise’s choice for lead actor, stating: “Cruise has the intensity to bring the Reacher character to life in a cinematic way.” Cruise also served as one of the film’s producers.

    While on the surface a typical action thriller, the film has several qualities that give it more appeal than your usual Cruise-in-your-face, stunt-reliant Hollywood movie. For one, the score from the opening is dynamic and inviting. Composer Joe Kraemer has given a wonderful underlying tension to the helicopter shots that is above your standard drum-drum-drum beating score that usually drives the plot of similar star oriented vehicles. This is more or less Kraemer’s initial foray into feature film scores and his work is clean, precise, and the cues work well, while still fresh. I thought the music worked well to bring me into the film from the start and was an important part overall to the film’s ultimate success in the way a score by Bernard Herrmann might work for Hitchcock (although I am not comparing Kraemer’s work to the level of Herrmann’s, only the way it supported the film with the same kind of individuality). In addition, the cinematography by five-time Oscar-nominated Caleb Deschanel was superior to your usual action shoot-em-up picture. These elements helped me focus more on the plot and less on their superior level of quality in a way that did not distract but lent credence to the film’s excellence. These valuable elements did not pass notice of this long time critic’s eye and ear and bear mentioning.

    Probably thanks to McQuarrie’s direction, the level of acting, along with an excellent cast, served this production well. For starters, Cruise portrayal of Jack Reacher does not make the character too overbearing in underplaying a part that requires little emotional expression. Cruise manages to make Reacher appear both benevolent and generous while simultaneously ready to boil over in an instant, keep us on edge as to how he will react in nearly every scene. However, it is the part of Jack’s foil, the mysterious figure Zec, which changes “Jack Reacher” into a film with superior supporting cast. From the film’s start, Zec’s gruesome disfigurement plays well in shaping his underplayed and yet frightening portrayal brought brilliantly to the screen in its small but no less important way by Werner Herzog, a figure well known on this website. Herzog, who is set to direct a film based on the life of T. H. Lawrence, plays a man like Reacher, one who has a past that is never revealed much but hinted in ways that help create a persona to be feared. “I did what I did to survive. Now you must do the same,” he says when confronting one of his lackeys while he ordered the man to bite off his fingers, just as he had done in a Russian gulag.

    During the course of the film’s plot, Jack Reacher must also deal with the shooter’s defending attorney (Rosamund Pike) who also happens to be the daughter of the District Attorney (longtime character actor Richard Jenkins). As the investigation deepens, Reacher becomes suspicious of everyone involved after he is set up, confronted and outnumbered during a fight on the streets of Pittsburgh. The city is the principle setting to the film and is star in its own right when several prominent landmarks serve as backdrops. Once his presence is known to all the parties involved, someone is working against him. Reacher soon finds he must battle both the police and the bad guys after he becomes a suspect. Eventually, he takes on the assistance of cantankerous rogue retired officer Cash (Robert Duvall). That Jack often enlists the assistance of former members of the military is a reoccurring motif in the Reacher novels. McQuarrie also adds nice little touches, such as including a scene from William Wyler’s “The Big Country” playing on a TV in the background of a suspenseful scene, probably as an homage to the master craftsman. Followed by a clue that includes a murder in a bathtub with a torn shower curtain, aka Hitchcock’s “Psycho” along with other subtle visuals and sounds McQuarrie uses to enhance this production noticeable only to knowledgeable film critics.

    The novels, like the film, have a familiar theme – similar to Batman or the Punisher, Jack Reacher (whose name arose from Child’s wife, before his first novel was published, observed him help an old woman take an item down from a high shelf – “You can always get a job as a Reacher.”) is a gifted vigilante who comes to the rescue of ordinary citizens, using his extraordinary talents to right some terrible wrong while solving the mystery of some crime at the same time. “Reacher” is entertaining while not employing too much pontification or the excesses of blood and gore that other Christmas films contain (and you know of whom I speak). Recommended.
    Last edited by cinemabon; 01-06-2013 at 10:51 PM.
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  2. #2
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    Child, who began writing in England for Granada television working on such series as “Brideshead Revisted,” “Jewel in the Crown,” “Prime Suspect,” and others, was subsequently let go in restructuring
    This is misleading. You make it sound as if he did some of the writing for those elite seies, Brideshead, Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, etc. In fact he was a Presentation Director for Granada, which he has described as "like an air traffic controller of the network airwaves". He did NOT write the program material for those series/mini-series, though he did some writing: he wrote commercials, news stories, and trailers. His activity as a union shop steward also had an effect on his leaving TV. He has said it meant that he would not get another job in the industry.

    As you can guess, I think your review and concluding recommendatiion also could mislead readers. Though there is nothing wrong with the acting and Tom Cruise does a good job with what he is given, he is miscast and the material is lackluster. And the critics agree with me, not you: Metacritic rating: 49, which is well below the "maybe this will be so bad it's good or "they just didn't get it" level. As for the idea that JACK REACHER lacks "excesses of blood and gore" that also potentially misleads viewers into thinking it''s not violent. It's plenty violent. It has fierce hand-to-hand combat between Reacher and hapless thugs in which people are beaten to death, a beating (not seen) causes the suspect to be mangled and in the hospital in a coma; the movie begins with a sniper picking off a series of innocent people and ends in a lenthy shootout with a lot of kiling. You can say this is an "Outrageous but entertaining pulp-melodrama thriller" as Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian does, but let's not siggest this is a pleasant ride, compared to DJANGO UNCHAINED (Metacritic: 80). To the ladies -- if you don't mind some colorful language -- skip this and go see the Jud Apatow marriage comedy, THIS IS 40 (Metacritic: 58). THIS IS 40's not a great movie either, but it's healthy, perceptive, and full of laughs.

    Or go to a comedy that's edgier and better written and more likey to win something at Oscar time: SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (Metacritic: 81, and the Audience Award at Toronto).

    I don't mind that Lee Child by his own admission has been "very limited in his ambitions" in writing the Jack Reacher novels and that they're pulpy B-Picture stuff. Actually I like this kind of story on screen. I just wish they had found a more appropriate actor to play the hero and made a more successful film. I hope Werner Herzog's T.E. Lawrence movie turns out to be good even though using Robert Pattinson of the TWILIGHT series in the main role with Jude Law and Naomi Watts doesn't seem hugely promising. Anyway, it's said to be about the life of the British lady explorer and orientalist Gertrude Bell, and maybe Watts will rise to the occasion. It's a great chance to delve deeper into the story of what happened to the Arabs in the course of British "imperial policy-making" at the time of the formation of Jordan and Iraq.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 01-06-2013 at 11:26 PM.

  3. #3
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    The level of violence doesn't even approach "Django" in any shape or form and you know it, Chris (or have you seen it).

    Child wrote for the production company but did not write the teleplays/screenplays mentioned as he was principly presentation director but was involved with writing shorts and commercial presenations.

    Critics generally did not like the film, true, but some did and meta ratings do not necessarily reflect a film's value as you know when film's you've like were slammed in the past (and I can name several).
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    The viiolence in DJANGO is very high, as it is a depiction of the brutality of Southern slave owners. The shooting in the latter part, which is a pastiche of the Spaghetti Western style, is very stylized, and has less of an effect. But I would not recommend JACK REACHER by saying it is less violent than DJANGO, and if you're going to do that, mention Tarantino's movie by name, please.

    Child wrote for the production company but did not write the teleplays/screenplays mentioned as he was principly presentation director but was involved with writing shorts and commercial presenations.
    Thanks for the correction. Obviously it was misleading for you to say that Child "began writing in England for Granada television working on such series as “Brideshead Revisted,” “Jewel in the Crown,” “Prime Suspect,” and others."

    The critics do sometimes pass over something that's very good. I don't think that happened this time.

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    Decent But Flawed

    Jack Reacher is one of the few movies which upon reflection was worse then when it was experienced. The plot flaws abound in the movie which detract from the movie and some of the scenes were over the top in a bad way. Nevertheless the movie sustained its consistent suspense and reached levels of intense emotional outrage in a good way. Finally, the ending of the movie was admittedly slick and emotional appealing.

    SPOILERS. However, (1) the idea of the deliberate assassination of one person cloaked in the apparent random deaths of three other innocent people doesn't ring true because it was much more reasonable to believe other less drastic means would have been likely available to achieve the outcome sought. (2) the idea of a second shooter positioned so far away from the first shooter would have been technically impossible to cover up through ballistic testing and it would have been at least more reasonable to have had a second shooter positioned sufficiently close to the first shooter to take ballistic testing into account. (3) the bumbling second lay attack in the bathroom with Reacher in the bathroom scene was over the top dumb and not really believable, even to the point where Reacher is caught off guard so easily and then as fate would have it, avoid further injury with so many accidental misses. (4) the Reacher and assassin hand to hand combat scene was also pretty lame not just for its fight scene, but for Reacher to just not shoot the man. (5) Robert Duvall was just too lucky because the better assassin was mysteriously out of the picture too long and never himself attempted to take out Robert Duvall, (6) Reacher's ability to shoot the investigator hiding behind the defense lawyer was just a script device, at least Reacher would have been better off just taking his time and shooting through the hole his eye had looked through.

    Other movies more technically pure and also as action appealing are The Shooter (2007), The Specialist (1994), Enemy of the State (1998). The Pelican Brief (1993) has the same intensity and consistency in action and conspiracy.

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    I believe that this piece is probably for fans of this type of medium (action/thriller) and as to some of the plot devices (two shooters) I think you missed the point on that.

    In the film, the way Reacher discovers it wasn't the shooter he first investigated in Afghanistan, was that "he'd have been on the bridge with the sun behind him, lining up his shot vertically instead of horizontally." There were never two shooters. That was the point. In the next to the final scene (SPOILER), the defense attorney confirms the theory when she interviews the suspect and he says, "IF I had shot them, I would have done so from the bridge..." The actual shooting was done from the garage and the quarter was put in the slot by the corrupt investigator, which also came out in the end.

    Reacher is known through the novel series as being a crack shot. In the film, Robert Duvall's character even says, "the only other person I know who could shoot like that (the sniper) was Jack Reacher."

    During the telephone call, Reacher warns the sniper that if he harmed the girl, he would beat him to death. However, having already killed the innocent clerk from the auto parts store, Reacher beats him to death anyway. In the novels, Reacher never allows any of his villains to simply go to jail.

    I found the film (and I can see I am alone here) very well done and entertaining. Granted, it wasn't Hitchcock or Wyler, but well done nonetheless.
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    More Confused

    For there to be a confusion with how the shooting ultimately took place after I was being careful to observe what was going on, implies to me that my very confusion implies a weakness in the film. The ending was stronger and more tightly wrapped up with the very idea of there being two shooters and that the admission by the alleged assassin at the very end, implies that the actual shooter was another person and that even the alleged assassin would have not taken the shot in the fashion that he purportedly was being tried for, thus confirming the original belief at the very beginning of the movie of a set up. Such as set up by its nature was most fundamental mystery/thriller component of the movie. If, however, one were to argue just one shooter, than well...I have a problem with that as reasonable doubt at trail could be raised in regards to the technical aspects of how the shot could even be accomplished which again would severely reduce what was at stake here and make the movie less emotively taut. I don't think either way the plot outline here regarding the shooting can be made to offer a really satisfying credible story element, one of the most important of the movie.

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    Actually, the plot of murdering more than one person to cover for a murder of another was already used by Agatha Christie in her Hercule Poirot series. I can see the story in my mind but cannot recall the exact episode.

    The true target, in this case, was the woman connected to the construction company. "The sniper took his time with the second target..." Reacher points out in reviewing the evidence. It was also another indicator in how they eliminated the main suspect as he would not have hesitated. Murder/mystery stories require some focus in that regard. Many people found the end of Brian DePalma's "Femme Fatale" confusing because of the numerous details the audience had to maintain to understand how the conflict of the murder had changed. This type of genre is one I have followed since I first started reading (my first novel at age ten was "A Study in Scarlet").
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