The one real twist in the strictly mechanical script by Richard Wenk (the very recent The Magnificent Seven), Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (the latter two now a very long way from Thirtysomethingdays) is the presence of a teenager, Samantha ( Danika Yarosh), who may or may not be Reacher’s daughter from a relationship 16 years earlier.
Narratively, the film is almost entirely nuts and bolts, with Reacher and Susan literally on the run most of the time from a coolly efficient assassin (Patrick Heusinger) simply called The Hunter who, in one-on-one combat, can give Reacher a pretty hard time. This puts him at odds with a Blackwater-like security firm that seems to be running the show and is both willing and anxious to rub out anyone who’s on to its big-time weapons and drug dealing. It’s even a notable drop-off from the first Reacher feature, which brandished some decent mystery-thriller elements, a very good and realistic car chase, Rosamund Pike in the female lead, juicy supporting turns by Robert Duvall and Werner Herzog and fine Caleb Deschanel cinematography. The film also marks quite a step down, in both ambition and accomplishment, from Cruise and director Edward Zwick’s previous collaboration on The Last Samurai 16 years ago.
Pour yourself a black coffee, sit back and enjoy.Based on the 18th of Child’s 20 Reacher best-sellers, the film serves up nothing that hasn’t been seen in countless action films before, and it’s striking how little effort appears to have been made to give it any distinction: The villains are military guys gone rogue, the female lead is basically fighting the same fight Rosalind Russell did to be recognized for her equal worth among men in His Girl Friday more than 75 years ago, the hand-to-hand combat won’t make anyone’s highlight reel and even the star looks a bit pale and out of training compared with the shape he invariably gets himself into for the far more elaborate and fun Mission outings. It will please them endlessly but is still drawn broadly enough as a crime drama to attract others. It is great, great fun and will come as a great, great relief to the Reacher devotees who will surely – at least at first – form the bulk of viewers. Ritchson works alone.Īmazon’s take on Reacher is as solidly made as he is and delivers the rollicking yarn as efficiently as the man himself can dispatch a Glock-wielding gangster. Ritchson’s delivery (with just a flicker of knowing humour about the eyes) of these litanies of deduction on screen recall – gloriously – the heady days of Paul Gross doing similar monologues as Constable Benton Fraser in Due South, albeit with the slightly more surreal atmosphere of the show to help him sell it. In the process, he gets put in the bad part of a prison to await arraignment and must use his finely honed fighting skills to stay alive (to see Ritchson walking serenely out of a bathroom littered with bleeding bodies is to know a very special kind of peace), befriends a lady (Reacher is allowed one lady per adventure) and forges a mutually respectful alliance with the investigating officer who is reluctantly impressed by both Reacher’s intellect and street smarts, which combine to give him almost Sherlockian powers of deduction. And, when he finds out who has been killed, the matter becomes a personal “find everybody responsible and kill every last one of them”. Now he must stay in Margrave and prove he didn’t do it. But, again, for the uninitiated: our enormous hero gets off a bus (on a whim – this, and drinking black coffee, is what he does) in the tiny town of Margrave, Georgia, and is quickly arrested on suspicion of murder. If you have read Killing Floor, you now know – and this is a promise of delight, not disappointment – exactly what happens in it.
#Tom cruise jack reacher films series#
The inaugural Reacher series is based, as is right and proper, on the first book in the novel sequence – Killing Floor.
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