An interesting, if imperfect, murder-mystery.

Rating: 7/10 (24 August 2018)

Tom Cruise gets to play a different sort of badass in this initial film adaptation of the work of Lee Child. Jack Reacher is a former military man who, after mustering out of service, deliberately fell off the grid and became something of a mystery man.
When a young sniper (Joseph Sikora), himself ex-military, takes out five supposedly random victims, he leaves enough evidence behind to ensure that he is soon caught by police. At his questioning, he does not speak but merely scrawls on a sheet of paper, "Get Jack Reacher." And so Jack shows up in town, and is drafted by defence attorney Helen (Rosamund Pike) to serve as a sort of investigator. What the two of them discover is that things are naturally not all that clear, that there are layers to this story and twists along the way.
One misgiving that I remember viewers had at the time was that Cruise seemed to be miscast, that he was not how author Child had originally envisioned the character. But give Cruise credit; he knows how to work that movie-star persona and create a "hero" who lives in a somewhat grey area, morally. He's not the Dudley Do-Right type. But Jack sticks around when he realizes how complicated and untenable the situation is getting, and is a man of his word.
The story is certainly entertaining, if not all that satisfying; for the most part, it's lacking in truly compelling villains. If you're anything like this viewer, you probably watched this because the legendary character / highly esteemed filmmaker Werner Herzog plays the main bad guy. But the script doesn't give him much to do that's interesting. He does have one great scene where he shows an underling how many digits are missing from his hands.
Still, it's Herzog and Robert Duvall (who turns up late in the story as a crusty but reliable old firing range owner / operator) who lend some gravitas to the proceedings, along with an appealing performance by the lovely Pike, and solid work by Richard Jenkins (as her dad, who happens to be the district attorney) and David Oyelowo (as a police detective).
The action scenes are certainly adequate, and some moments are played with a definite amount of humour. The plot isn't fleshed out that well, but it does touch upon some provocative themes, such as life for some soldiers during and after their service.
Reasonably slick filmmaking helps make this entertaining. And some people may appreciate this being the kind of feature that is violent without containing much in the way of gore.
Seven out of 10.