Jack Reacher (2012)

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Starring Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins, David Oyelowo, Robert Duvall, Jai Courtney, Werner Herzog, Joseph Sikora, Alexia Fast, Michael Raymond-James, Josh Helman. [PG-13]

Accused of killing five people with a rifle, disgraced former Army sniper Sikora scribbles down, “Get Jack Reacher.” But who is Jack Reacher? Doesn’t really matter—he’s just one of your run-of-the-mill action movie protagonists with a concentrated set of skills that make him alternately vulnerable and impervious, depending on the demands of the scene in question, but is generally the smartest and toughest guy in whichever room he happens to be standing. More specifically, he’s the main character of a series of books by Lee Childs, he’s played onscreen by a miscast Cruise (not because of the reputed physical discrepancies between the actor and character as written, but because Reacher seems to be a taciturn, haunted, uncharismatic sort, which doesn’t play to Cruise’s strengths), and he was once a U.S. Army MP investigator who now just wanders the country doing…whatever needs doing, I guess. Although there’s no faulting the technical qualities of the production, and there are two or three elements worth remembering (the chilling opening sequence, Herzog’s inscrutably “Herzog-ian” portrayal of a villain even more mysterious than the hero), this is just a routine action-thriller that doesn’t rise more than an inch or two above a mindless way to kill a couple of hours. In fact, it becomes one of those disposable entertainments where the numerous clichés—e.g., the hero tossing away his gun so he can engage the antagonist in “fair” hand-to-hand combat—almost become comfort food because they at least generate some sort of response from the viewer, even if it’s a bad laugh or groan. A sequel followed in 2016.

53/100