"I didn't come here to help him. I came here to bury him."

Rating: 10/10 (14 July 2014)

I watched this movie twice; the second time it took three hours. I had to stop the action frequently to take notes and consider how some of the scenarios fit into the flow of the story. With thrillers like this one, there's often some plot hole or element that doesn't make sense and affects the credibility of the story. Try as I might, I couldn't come up with one here. The writing was flawless as every base was covered in explaining how four random murders were used to cover up an intended one. That's not to say that this is something that could ever have happened for real. Jack Reacher's (Tom Cruise) analysis of the random murder victims depended heavily on some improbable coincidence, but he acknowledged as much with victims Nancy Holt and investment banker Sawyer. Whether he was right or not about their having an affair had no bearing on the outcome of the story.
The thing that intrigued me the most was that whole business about the 1968 quarter with Barr's fingerprints on it. Like Reacher, I kept wondering why Detective Emerson (David Oyelowo) dumped the parking meter to find it, even more so than the alleged shooter using the meter in the first place. The only way for it to make sense was because Emerson knew it would be planted there by his accomplices working for The Zec. Man, I get a kick out of that name - The Zec. Werner Herzog was a perfect choice to portray that character. With the false eye he looked like a Zec, no question about it.
For Tom Cruise, this was a far cry from his Charlie Babbitt and Jerry Maguire days. I actually liked him here, playing against type as a former military investigator with a no nonsense approach to solving problems. The fact that he was too smart here, along with his prowess as an indestructible fighting machine, might be the reason so many viewers find his character a little too unbelievable for the story, and I guess that's fair enough. But then again, it is only a story, which I thought was plotted out incredibly well.
Earlier I mentioned that I couldn't think of anything that didn't work in the picture. Now that I think about it, there is one thing that seems impossible to imagine. Can you really bite off your own finger?