Reach for the star vehicle

Rating: 4/10 (30 December 2012)

This is the first of a potential franchise, based upon the page-turners by prolific British author Lee Child. Based on the novel One Shot, Jack Reacher opens with an apparently psychotic sniper spree, which turns out to be part of a broader mystery, to be investigated (in his own pugilistic way) by the wandering title character (Tom Cruise), along with the lawyer (Rosamund Pike) who'll be defending the accused.
The plot is a procedural join-the-dots job, whose preposterousness starts amusing but becomes wearying. As is often the case, the tiny details (usually involving Reacher's photographic memory) are more interesting than the big twists. At 90 minutes, this could have had some of the rampant energy and briskness of a film like Salt. But the script is cripplingly talky, directly at odds with the self-proclaimed pragmatism of the titular hero. There's a great-looking car chase to relieve us from the reams of discursive dialogue, but it comes to nothing much, feeling forced like that strange airport action sequence shoehorned into Casino Royale.
Worse, entire scenes drop dead before our eyes. There's a moment where Reacher confronts Sandy, a vulnerable girl (who'll test the 12A certificate by getting brutally punched out, much like the opening of Christopher McQuarrie's last film, The Way of the Gun), and it feels like we have to wait an eternity before she gets to the point... only for Reacher to return for yet more chat. And then there's the moment when Reacher gazes into an office block and makes an ear-rippingly pretentious speech about how the little people are trapped, and if they could live their life again, they'd live like him. You mean live a nomadic existence, building no intimate relationships, killing without mercy and constantly on the run from the law? No thanks, Mr Reacher.
On the plus side, there's a reasonably exciting final shootout, admirably filmed in medium shot and not edited to a state of incomprehensibility - a rarity these days. And there are sold supporting turns from David Oyelowo and the ever-reliable Richard Jenkins.
Other performances don't land on two feet. I was looking forward to Werner Herzog (as baddie "The Zec") showing up and injecting some campness into proceedings, but the great director is not a great actor, and it sounds like he's reciting from an earpiece. Rosamund Pike, a decent actress forever slumming it, seems to have been instructed to wear a permanent rabbit/headlights expression.
And then there's Mr Cruise. I kept looking at Jai Courtney (who plays the hotshot Charlie), and wondering, with his superior height and brooding, thuggish demeanour, whether he would not be a more logical choice for the brawny giant at the film's stony heart. Instead we get Tom Cruise, ball-busting blokes and seducing women with his mere presence, at the centre of "A Tom Cruise Production".