Who the hell is Jack Reacher?

Rating: 9/10 (22 June 2015)

Jack Reacher may a simply-titled tale of a quasi-mysterious lead procedurally solving a crime and getting his hands a bit dirty along the way, but behind the simple premise, and the even simpler title, is a layered and exceptionally well-constructed movie of the sort that really isn't made all that often, one that's as smart as it is slick, one that's as mentally engaging as it is outwardly entertaining. It's a picture that refuses to give in to too much convention, eschewing a typical blockbuster-fiendly approach for a style that's more substance-based than it is concerned with the raw entertainment value of the material, which only enhances the entertainment value at the end of the day. It's a smart thinking man's sort of film, one with robust and beautifully realized action supporting, not supplanting, a layered plot that unravels in a pure, well-conceived "whodunit and why" premise that's fresh rather than flawed, riveting rather than recycled. Based on the novel One Shot by Lee Child, the ninth in the "Reacher" series, the film adaptation surpasses all expectations and should, hopefully and given this film's success, clear the path for future Reacher installments in the near future.
Five people are gunned down on Pittsburgh's North Shore by distant sniper fire. They are long-distance professional hits carried out by a skilled marksman using an M1A rifle and precision self-loaded ammunition. When Detective Emerson (David Oyelowo) pulls a quarter from a parking meter near the site of the shootings with a clear fingerprint on it, he believes he's found the killer. Pittsburgh police arrest an Iraq war veteran named James Barr (Joseph Sikora). It seems like an open-and-shut case when he all but confesses to Emerson and District Attorney Alex Rodin (Richard Jenkins), but rather than sign the confessional, he asks to see a man named Jack Reacher, a man Emerson and Rodin quickly learn is something of a ghost, a man living largely off the grid and who was once a decorated military veteran and a renowned investigator. The law doesn't even need to seek him out. Reacher presents himself to Emerson and Rodin and meets Barr's attorney and Rodin's daughter, Helen (Rosamund Pike). Reacher and Helen Rodin agree to team up, he looking into the murderer and she into the seemingly random victims. As their investigation furthers, they stumble upon a web of corruption and lies that extend well beyond the suspect.
Jack Reacher's command of the cinema medium and deep understanding of the subtly dramatic is showcased from the film's opening minutes and carries through right on to the end. The dialogue-free open, paired with deliberate, enticing, and anticipatory opening shots command the audience's attention and create more dramatic upheaval and emotional turmoil than often does a lesser-crafted segment that relies more on manufactured energy and faux drama over precision craftsmanship meshed with simple storytelling techniques. The opening sets the scene for an absorbing picture in which truths are revealed in a deliberate yet very well-paced cadence. One truth yields another, another produces more questions, a question might create an action scenario, and so on until the end. It's a story shaped by a keen dramatic style that keeps viewers guessing and never either ahead of or behind the characters. It's not so much that Screenwriter/Director Christopher McQuarrie (The Way of the Gun) makes the audience a participant in the film, but he rather unfolds the story in such a way that it remains even on both sides of the screen, one never in a different place along the story line from the other.
The film's opening act sets the dramatic dynamics for what's to come, dynamics that in lesser films would be considered adequate for the climactic resolution and revelation but that here are both only the beginnings of the story rather than its end. As the story furthers, the intrigue intensifies and the action slowly builds towards several remarkably staged action scenes that, like that effective opening sequence, take on a more cinematically reserved approach -- here without music rather than dialogue -- that actually heightens the anticipation and pure effect rather than diminish them. Whether a fistfight midway through between Reacher and two bumbling thugs in a confined space, an almost surreal car chase that rivals anything in Drive from a structural effectiveness perspective, or the climactic shootout that chillingly pulls the audience into the middle of a deadly firefight that shows the effectiveness of focused, hard-hitting realism in Action cinema, Jack Reacher often entrances its audience with its sublimely executed action, the perfect compliment to the film's nail-biting story and deliberate unraveling thereof.
Jack Reacher's blend of quality story and precise technical construction are accentuated by a fantastic lead performance from Tom Cruise. Although not the ideal physical manifestation of Jack Reacher based on the character's written description, Cruise does find the inner Reacher wonderfully, playing the part coolly and effectively with a strikingly efficient outward capability and inward mental prowess. Cruise's verbal quips and quick, on-his-feet thinking manifest naturally, defining the character perhaps even more thoroughly than the fisticuffs and gunplay. Reacher is a different animal than Cruise's Ethan Hunt, not quite so physically gifted as the actor's hallmark multi-film character but certainly someone capable of holding his own in a fight. Reacher is less a superman and more a well-rounded individual, gifted with powers of deduction, insight, quick-thinking, and capable physical stamina. It makes the character more approachable, and Christopher McQuarrie has built the film around the character's strengths rather than make him into some larger-than-life figure that would only yield cheap thrills and a subpar story. The character meshes perfectly with the film's adherence to realism and subtlety. Where the Mission: Impossible films may be more purely Hollywood, Jack Reacher works towards building a more realistic, this- could-happen sort of feel that's very much welcome in this age of cinema-in-overdrive.