: Jack Reacher
I’ve never read any of Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” series and really didn’t know anything about this film except that it was an action film with Tom Cruise. The opening scene of a sniper shooting random people was hard to watch, considering the events of late, but then the story became an investigation into a conspiracy surrounding that shooting and the film got interesting.
I really liked the way Reacher’s character did his investigating, taking the slightest of clues but very plausibly producing real evidence and leads from them. In a lot of crime stories the leads come too easily and are unrealistic. The uncovering of the conspiracy was extremely interesting and well-done.
Unfortunately, the final third of the film devolves into a straight shoot-em-up with a surprisingly anticlimactic and wimpy fight between the two main enemies. That’s doesn’t ruin the movie, but the weak explanation of the conspiracy almost does. I still liked it overall, but it would have been so much better with a real villain and something beyond mere money at stake. The main bad guy looks as poor as a church mouse — yet supposedly he’s rich from extorting millions from other cities? It made little sense and was tossed off poorly, as though the entire plot of the movie was nothing but a MacGuffin designed just to show Jack Reacher doing his stuff. I have to think the book explains things better, but I don’t know.
I did like the Jack Reacher character, though he’s purposely so enigmatic and mysterious that we don’t get to know much of his motivations or background, which makes him a difficult hero to cheer on. He seems to operate above the law in major ways, and yet the law hassles him constantly over petty things like bar fights. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of him, though I don’t think this was particularly successful so they make not make more, but it does have a lot of potential as a movie series.
Topic: [/movie] |
