Shot taken, shot missed

Rating: 4/10 (30 July 2013)

Based on the Lee Child novel One Shot, much has been said about the inappropriateness of Tom Cruise in the leading role of this movie, and I don't intend to go into detail here. But he is miscast, and badly: the role has several elements of the character from the book, and Cruise seems to miss just about every one. He can't do laconic - it comes across as smarmy; he can't do stoic either, it comes across as supercilious. And it almost goes without saying that he can't do suppressed violence as well.
(Potential spoiler following) But the biggest failing of the movie is in the opening few minutes, when it is made obvious who the assassin is. I got the feeling I was watching an episode of some trite TV detective drama from the 1970's, where the plot was given away in the opening scene so that the sole interest was whether or not the heroic investigator would solve the mystery in time to save the damsel. (There was always a damsel in these shows, and she became distressed at some stage. Always. Just like in this movie.) I marked the movie down because of this deep and insurmountable flaw, but there is some degree of "but wait, there's more" to the ways the movie fails.
The flaws go deeper still with what often happens when adapting a book for the screen - the dialog or background information that the prose supplies goes missing and the director or screenwriter fails to provide it for the audience. The Zec (the antagonist) appears very briefly and his motivations and history are covered just as fast. The same applies to Robert Duvall's character (Cash) which gets almost as much screen time as The Zec.
(Potential spoiler) On the subject of Duvall, he appears to have little interest in his role, and by the end of the movie, so too, the director, Christopher McQuarrie. At this stage Cash holds his gun over a rock, sprays bullets wildly, and somehow manages to injure an assailant a hundred meters or more away, and on the other side of a large quarry.
At this stage, I just wanted the episode/movie to end. Unlike the book, my disbelief was far from suspended - I take exception to lazy acting and directing. It treats the viewer with contempt, and I respond in kind.