Does Not Rise Above the Chaff in this Crowded Genre

Rating: 5/10 (21 December 2012)

With Tom Cruise attached to this straight genre film, I figured that there was an intelligent script that attracted him to the project. Alas, it feels more like just a paycheck film. This is a middle-of-the-road uninspired production with no real flair and no standout performance by Cruise. Most supporting actors fair even less. All due to a traditional character structure, with familiar subplots. Worse is the dumbed down exposition. Way too much time was spent spelling out this story, such as the unlikely match-up of the district attorney prosecuting while his daughter is defending the alleged sniper. If this was to be a truly intelligent thriller, the script would not have given some obvious clues to the audience early in the film. Nothing is original in this detective whodunit. Without giving anything away, the sniper's face is presented to the audience at the beginning of the film, and we see that in fact it is not the man arrested (and tortured) by the police.
Tom Cruise is supposedly a man with a clean record, but takes part in vigilantism. His actions are very visible and seems to want to simultaneously hide and be very visible at the same time. So I felt confused as to what my expectations for this film were. It is certainly not a tough guy action film, even though it is written that way. There are only a handful of action set pieces involving a shoot-out or a car chase. It wasn't much of a whodunit since we are presented the villain in the opening scene. There are some adequate thriller elements. The real motive for the shooting does provide possibilities for intrigue, but this is mishandled. Which brings us to Werner Herzog, which other reviews acclaim as a enigmatic bad guy. I wasn't so struck by his persona. He certainly had a hard luck story that makes you cringe, but again goes nowhere.
Rosamund Pike, the defense attorney, is supposed to be the possible love interest and foil for Reacher. After all, why would she waste time following around this loner who has no current credentials? And, Reacher admits that the defendant was capable of losing it. Here is another moment where the script could have soared. The film could have examined the questionable innocence of soldiers becoming mentally disturbed from fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq, where soldiers in real life snapped and went on shooting sprees. Instead, it plays it safe, turning our seemingly trigger happy defendant into a war hero because his shooting spree happened to take out some terrorists in disguise. This is way too convenient and telegraphs too much to the audience.
My expectations were forced to be lowered at this point. Although is supposed to be a mystery where we are given dramatic clues and a trail of detection is spelled out, there is too little to chew on. Again, a smarter thriller would have interwoven a little more doubt into the motives of the characters. Maybe there was another motive behind the D.A.'s daughter working on the defense? Maybe another detective's motives could have been explained, and help me understand the fear in his eyes. All this seemed to be be heading to an obvious conclusion, and all we are left it is how entertaining is to get there. I like Tom Cruise, and although it is not cool to like him, he still can star in a blockbuster that bring in boxcars of cash. He succeeds by doing a fully expressed performance of Tom Cruise. I liked his mix of serious and goofy in the last Mission Impossible movie. I also liked the mix of superiority and vulnerability too. This is what is missing in the Tom Cruise in this film. His voice never switches into high pitch whine mode, his eyeballs don't start to bulge out in the face of danger. Instead he is man who is resigned to play out the tired bar fight as a demonstration of his badassness (yawn).
This film fails on many levels trying draw the audience into the mystery, and any sense of danger only comes to a half-boil. I think it was a mistake to make Reacher so invincible. One scene that is prominently featured in the movie trailer is a moment where Reacher tries to hide from a police dragnet by mixing in with a crowd. I honestly find that highly unlikely. If you witnessed someone fleeing a high speed chase, would your first instinct be to help him? Especially without knowing anything about this man? He could have just murdered a bunch of people. That made no sense at all, but looks good in a trailer.
I am left to believe the main interest for Tom Cruise to appear in this run-of-the-mill film was so he could recreate his own "Bullitt" car chase. In fact there are some identical moments between the car chases, include sideswiping, and of course the distinctive sound of a big block engine. I certainly am not urging them to make this into a franchise.