It's not perfect, but it is pretty entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (14 January 2018)

An ex-army sniper James Barr kills 5 seemingly random victims. The District Attorney's department seek a confession from Barr, but Barr refuses to accept responsibility and demands that the DA's department find Jack Reacher. Jack soon arrives on the scene and as he delves deeper into the case Reacher uncovers a much wider conspiracy...
It's fair to say that Jack Reacher isn't a particularly novel concept and it's also probably fair to say that it has lifted bits and pieces from many other conspiracy films. However, I have to admit that I did find it to be pretty entertaining; director Christopher McQuarrie does a nice job in balancing the story with the action set-pieces meaning that the film has no dull spots.
As an actor I've always found Tom Cruise to be rather hit-and-miss; he often brings a cocksure type swagger and arrogance to a lot of his performances which sometimes makes him a little off-putting to watch. He does this in Jack Reacher, but, ironically, I actually think that this performance served this particular film well (Jack Reacher seemed to have a 'not give a crap attitude' to everything so I felt that this approach actually worked in this film). The supporting cast all put in so-so performances with the possible exception of Werner Herzog (who has a rather chilling calmness about him which proves to be occasionally unnerving).
The weaknesses with this film lie with poorly developed villains and rather disposable victims whom it is impossible to care for or develop much in the way of sympathy for, but I have to give credit to McQuarrie for making this film mostly work and for providing me with a film that proved to be a fairly entertaining 120 minutes.