First and foremost, you shouldn’t give money to Tom Cruise under any circumstances. Second, maybe read some of the books and get back to us.
Tom Cruise has never been very believable to me as an action star. Also, he comes across as smarmy and trying too hard.
In the SF movies he can work because he’s a guy caught up in the middle of some stuff. Then if he wants to run fast and jump and punch someone, sure, that works. Don’t tell me he’s some super duper fighter guy though. He doesn’t look anything like that.
Anyway, I saw the trailer. It made me not want to see this movie. It will be on free TV in a few years. I can wait. I probably won’t watch it then, either.
“I never read the Hobbit, I can’t believe anyone is complaining about Dolph Lundgren being cast as Bilbo…”
He shoots…he scores…
I don’t know the first thing about the books, but I really hated this movie’s script. What a clunky right-wing Mary Sue fantasy about gun nuts, American cars, a legal system dictated by effete heartless liberals, paranoia about the government, and glib vigilantism, all pandering to the working class heroes of Pittsburgh. Ugh.
But really, I mind that stuff a lot less than I mind the fact that it felt like a TV show dimly lit by Tom Cruise’s star wattage. This is really the sort of movie that should have starred Dolph Lundgren.
-Tom
Well the book is written by an Englishman and as an Englshman isn’t that how we see the USA anyways (could it be a documentary) ;)
Or, it could be that a lot of people have a hatred of Tom Cruise that makes them unable to see that he could do this easily.
Either way, it would actually be nice with some commentary on the movie, instead of how tall Jack Reacher is - We get it by now.
The movie is good but he’s too short works for me ;)
What else did you expect to be discussed before the movie was actually out though?
When you have a two minute trailer of a movie featuring a character from over a dozen books of course it would center around the books in comparison because there wasn’t much else to talk about at that point.
I look forward to more impressions about the actual movie because I’m curious though.
Punctuation dammit, Reemul! ;-)
Thanks though - it does look rather interesting from the trailers I’ve seen here these past few days.
I don’t have anything to say about his movie but I would like to know more about the next installment of “Tall Guy Adventures”.
I was kinda tempted to read one of these books for what would be an edge of my seat thrill ride of Jack Reader finding clues on the top shelf(WHERE NO ONE ELSE COULD REACH) and then besting the villain in an impromptu slam dunk contest(SOARING JUST PAST THE OUTSTRETCHED HAND OF THE 6’2" BAD GUY), but the one bad note the trailer struck was that “everyone is a trained killer” line which made me think this might be some USA #1, America soldiers are the bestest, war heroes can’t be murderers but civilians don’t appreciate their sacrifices bullshit. Tom’s post about the vigilantism/gun nut script kinda confirms those fears.
I’ll wait around for Jason Statham’s take on the Parker character next year to get my fix of pulp/genre characters played by actors who are much shorter than their literary counterparts.
P.S. Didn’t we already do the “wrongfully accused war hero sniper” thing with Mark Wahlberg?
The premise of Jack Reacher is that a sniper is framed for a shooting spree. When Reacher arrives on the scene, he explains that the sniper who’s been framed had been on another shooting spree years earlier. He snapped at the end of his tour of duty back in Iraq, after years of watching people through a sniper scope without ever being able to pull the trigger. I believe Reacher explains this sensation as having an itch and never being able to scratch it.
So anyway, this guy finally scratches the itch and offs four contractors, just to get his jollies before coming home from Iraq. But the four guys he offs were just coming from gangraping a bunch Iraqi women and girls (the movie takes pains to point out that some of the rape victims were “as young as 11 years old”). Yep, that’s right. The sniper decides to randomly murder four people and – wouldn’t you know it? – the four people he murders are despicable rapers. They’re even zipping up their pants as they get shot. Rapers. So even though this guy is a murderer, he’s the kind of murderer who murdered people who deserved it. Accidentally.
That’s the sort of utterly contrived moral ambiguity you get in Jack Reacher.
-TomYep, but it’s just a book, plenty of stuff like that in most books. Personally I don’t think they made the best choice on which book to use.
It might as well have been called The 12 Masculinity Trials of Tom Cruise. It got a bit over the top.
After a kinda rocky too-Cruisy opening full of smirking and swagger, I thought Tom settled into the role remarkably well. By the time he’s telling Sandy to leave town I was watching a credible version of Jack Reacher. I was glad to see Cruise in a role that wasn’t tailor made for his familiar schtick. It actually seemed to stretch him as an actor and I haven’t seen that since Born on the 4th of July. Not saying it was brilliant or anything, just saying Tom’s been coasting for most of his career. This was closer to his work in Colateral than I had any reason to hope. And Werner Herzog was brilliant.
I’d see the next movie for sure.
Wow. That’s not how I heard that at all. You make it sound as if the point of the story was that Barr wasn’t so bad 'cause he killed bad men, where I saw it as backstory as to why Reacher ain’t in the Army anymore. It doesn’t mitigate Barr’s crimes in the least, certainly not for Reacher.
It’s a classic snafu. The army decides not to prosecute a mass murderer 'cause they don’t want a scandal. That’s not moral ambiguity, that’s moral turpitude. That’s total corruption. That’s fubar. The fact that these men were “rapers” was just another day in Iraq it sounded like to me. Folk say the sentiment in these stories is “right wing” but I read them as a lot darker than that.
I don’t pretend to understand the point. I just felt it was one of many example of the contrived, convenient, awkward writing. But it’s verging on offensive if you’re correct that the point of that story was that institutionalized gangrape is “just another day in Iraq”. I think that’s quite a stretch given the script’s pro-military bent.
-TomThe more Reacher you read the more you uncover about him, it’s like a steady drip drip in each book. Then there is a book about his past and so on. What you don’t get is the full story on a plate that would fit a novel.
Hey Tom,
It seems clear that you found the movie pretty thoroughly distasteful, prolly not worthy of discussion and fair enough, of course, but I think some of this is really fascinating and timely, so here goes. :)
I’ve been hearing a lot these days about “right-wing” and “pro-military” movies. In the case of this film, I’m not seeing it. I’m thinking that it would take a very left-wing and anti-military perspective indeed to call this movie “pro-military.” I mean, the premise of the story is that a sniper goes on a killing spree for no reason other than his being conditioned to kill by the army. And then we learn that this mass murderer is not brought to justice because the army itself wants to avoid a scandal. So not only is there no justice for the victims of this mass murdering sniper, there is no justice for a single one of the many victims of the gang rape. All thanks to the army chain of command. And yet other writers beside you have called this movie “pro-military.” How does that work?
And we’re given to understand that soon after these events, Jack Reacher, the Mary Sueish hero of the story, elected to leave the army and become a “ghost.” That’s a pretty radical decision. So I don’t think it would be fair to say that the hero of the piece is himself “pro-military” either.
And yet the notion persists. Because the movie celebrates guns and the hero’s military demeanor? Because it presents an aging veteran in a positive, can-do, let’s-get-the-bad-guys light? Because it presents the gun subculture as anything other than detestable? The sense I’m getting is that folk call it “pro-military” because the subject itself upsets them and they’d rather not go there unless the film maker is doing some kind of obvious exposé.
I’m thinking it’s more of an insider’s view than it is a partisan’s view. I see it as, at best, ambivalent about “the military.” It is what it is. It’s got its upside and its deeply troubling downside. And that means it’s a worthy subject for a work of art, no?
HKCavalier
“Hey, hey, hey, don’t be mean. We don’t have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”