Don't believe the haters, this is a lot of fun

Rating: 8/10 (14 October 2016)

I went in to this movie not expecting much. People didn't talk a lot about Jack Reacher, and the reviews were mostly mixed or negative. Boy, was I surprised!
Jack Reacher is the best action movie I've seen in a long time, but not only that - it's also super funny. I think many of the reviewers/critics didn't get what this movie was going for with its cheesy dialogue, larger than life characters and over the top action. They probably didn't get the joke, and what bothers me, is that two years after this, John Wick was using the same premise (former soldier/special agent with unique skills singlehandedly putting down a dangerous group of criminals), and was a much less entertaining film (at least in my opinion), still that became an instant cult classic, while Jack Reacher has been dismissed and forgotten - undeservedly so. I'm afraid it mostly has to do with Tom Cruise's private life and scientology background, which would be a shame.
Jack Reacher is entertaining, smart, suspenseful, the action is fantastic, the performances (all of them!) are excellent, especially Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike, but the supporting cast as well. I haven't enjoyed watching Robert Duvall on screen so much for a long time, but Richard Jenkins, Jai Courtney and David Oyelowo also deserve to be mentioned.
The movie is not perfect. There was a 10 minute segment around halfway through the film when I felt like it was dragging a little bit, and there is a reveal that I thought was not handled very well. There's also some excessive violence and brutality in a couple of scenes, that rubbed me the wrong way, and didn't even fit the tone of the movie. Finally, towards the end there's a scene when Reacher kills a bad guy, but the scene is pretty badly edited, so it's hard to understand how Reacher could get to the guy the way he did (those who saw the movie probably know what I'm talking about).
Anyway, it's a severely underrated movie. Definitely check it out if you haven't so far!
8/10