A fairly average affair

Rating: 5/10 (13 November 2015)

Jack Reacher is an action thriller based on the novel by Lee Child called "One Shot". It see's well Jack Reacher(Tom Cruise) and his quest to work out what happened in the events surrounding a massacre of innocent civilians in which the suspected gunman has asked for Reacher by name. The plot unfolds like the thriller it is in an extremely thrilling way but I did feel ultimately fails to be anymore than a basic movie trying to entice the viewer in with a complicated story. Now don't get me wrong I didn't think it was bad or anything but mediocre certainly comes to mind, despite decent performances the movie never truly advances to a satisfactory level.
Now Cruise is OK in the role as Jack, he doesn't completely own the role but nevertheless plays him out well and some of the stunts are pretty nicely done by Cruise himself. Cast such as Rosamund Pike and Robert Duvall appear and although Duvall is a welcome sight and good, Pike for me never quite gets going and the role is wasted on her. Werner Herzog makes a random appearance and he feels the most wasted, we never truly discover the character he plays and overall certain members of the cast can seem underused.
Christopher McQuarrie directs and adapts the movie and does a similar job to Cruise, never quite owns it. His direction is steady and the film feels grounded in his hands but it does at times like I say feel over complicated, He really should have made an effort to further explain things. Having said all that McQuarrie still does an OK job and as said makes this grounded and manages to at least make the action partly exciting even if this lacks it at times. The movie could be said to be overlong but the 130 minute running time does start to tick down toward the end when the real exciting-ish parts come into it.
If you're looking for something with Cruise that feels almost Mission: Impossible like then you may enjoy this, as said lacks a lot of action but this film isn't all about fighting etc, it's all about seeing what's going and why Reacher is needed. Tom Cruise produced this and one would think he saw potential in this similar to the potential he must also see in the Mission: Impossible movies, this fails to really capitalize though I felt on making it exciting and although never dull, it never feels like something you'd want to watch again soon.
So all in all a miss for me but only slightly, for sure will work for some and I would recommend it because this kind of movie swings both positive and negative. No one let down this movie, it for me just doesn't transition that well, acting is fine and directing too but maybe the novel works best on paper. I must also mention that this movie is oddly funny at times or tries to be a lot anyway, some of the jokes are pretty nicely done and the humour side is also sometimes incorporated into the stunts to make them seem more fun and less tense all the way through.