Jack Reacher by Christopher McQuarrie on Cine+ Premiere
My rating: 7 out of 10 star
Six shots. Five dead. One heartland city thrown into a state of terror. But within hours the cops have it solved: a slam-dunk case. Except for one thing. The accused man says: You got the wrong guy. Then he says: Get Reacher for me. And sure enough, ex-military investigator Jack Reacher is coming. He knows this shooter-a trained military sniper who never should have missed a shot. Reacher is certain something is not right-and soon the slam-dunk case explodes. Now Reacher is teamed with a beautiful young defense lawyer, moving closer to the unseen enemy who is pulling the strings. Reacher knows that no two opponents are created equal. This one has come to the heartland from his own kind of hell. And Reacher knows that the only way to take him down is to match his ruthlessness and cunning-and then beat him shot for shot.
When looking for something to watch the other day I found this one in the program tableau for Cine+ Premiere on CanalSat. Not a movie that had caught my attention before so I decided to have a go at watching it. I have to say that I have spent 130 minutes in worse ways. I found this movie quite good.
It is a pretty classical crime story where it appears that one guy is the guilty one without a doubt but the truth is of course a bit more complicated than this. So our hero, who just to complicate things storms onto the scene also being convinced that the guy did it, have to unravel how the real bad guys managed to frame the poor sod.
The movie is a fairly hard boiled crime story and a cross between Columbo, Dirty Harry and something else. It is reasonably intelligent, holds together without too many holes and quite well implemented. There is some decent good old detective work combined with a fair amount of action ranging from fist fights to car chases and shootouts. The major complaint I have is that Tom Cruise is really not the right guy for the role. He does not look half as tough as the character he is trying to portray.
Other than that it is indeed an enjoyable movie. It is perhaps more of a grandiose TV-movie than something you (or at least I) would go and watch in a theater (then since I got a proper home-cinema system I rarely go to the theaters at all any more anyway) but nevertheless quite likable.
PG's Ramblings 