Would buy on DVD but not pay todays cinema prices

Rating: 6/10 (3 October 2013)

I have never considered myself a Tom Cruise fan, my movie collection however would suggest otherwise; I am going to use the excuse that he is a great presence in the genre I am more favourable to. This said it feels strange to me to associate Mr Cruise with the form of humour, as he commonly portrays the tough military character with a broken past of love. However in his recent movies I have found myself chuckling away at various sarcastic comments and sly jokes as Cruise dips his toes in the pond of funny, and there is continuous dipping of his tiny toes in his recent movie Jack Reacher, based on the novel "One Shot" by Lee Childs, where Cruise plays an ex-military man (sound familiar?) more specifically military police. Reacher is called in or rather turns up unannounced just at the time people need him, and becomes entangled in a defence attorneys (Rosamund Pike) attempt at saving a man, Barr (Joseph Sikora), who is apparently being set up to have shot a group of people; of which brings me to my first disappointment with the fact that the audience was shown right at the beginning who the real shooter was and knew it wasn't Barr (Sikora), opposed to leading the audience through a "CSI/Who Dunnit" type of plot which would fit in with the "Law & Order/CSI" type theme running throughout, showing how they figured out who it was and how they saw the evidence etc. I know what your thinking, "So Tom Cruise has gone all mystery solving now and not climbing up buildings as a secret agent!" Believe me when I saw the trailer for this movie my first thought was something along the lines of: "Eurgh Mission Impossible as usual!" But I will admit I was pleasantly surprised of this new genre twist Cruise has gone for, being that I'm a fan of "Law & Order" type TV shows. That being said there is still enough brawls and perfectly choreographed bone breaking and life ending fight scenes along with high-speed car chases with lots of drifting and damaging of very nice cars to satisfy even the die-hard action addicts among you.
So the plot centres around Jack Reacher (Cruise) and Defense Attorney Helen Rodin (Pike) and their attempt to keep suspect Barr from death row, of whom also is ex-military, their effort to save this man leads them obviously into trouble and set-ups as you can imagine, which lead to various fight scenes and manly stances from Mr Cruise. Reacher and Helen need to figure why this man was setup and who by in order to save themselves and Barr.
Mr Cruise clearly does very well in this action thriller and it was quite enjoyable to watch, what with the incoherent man grunting throughout the fight scenes and the obvious "part of the contract" scene where Tom Cruise has to take his shirt off at least once in the movie; along with that "CSI" feeling "Oh! So thats how they did that." However I wasn't without some disappointment hence why I didn't give it full marks. I feel the ending to the case of Barr (Sikora), was rather abrupt and although the bad guys were dealt with I was left feeling like justice still hadn't been served and that the criminals had just been given the easy way out, or the writers ran out of ideas!
Overall this was a good movie to sit and watch, I wouldn't pay to see this at the cinema again giving the high prices, but I may consider purchasing it on Blu-ray and DVD during the sales; as I thought even though this was slightly different to what we are used to seeing Cruise do it is still very much the same and hence this made it somewhat predictable. If you're a fan of the "Mission Impossible series" or action thrillers then I think you will find this satisfying enough to not walk out the screening mid-way through and are likely to purchase the Blu-ray or DVD when it is released.