Verdict:
The last movie I saw before this one happened to be Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol and the problem with a movie like that is that it’s kind of dumb. The crosshairs are on the action scenes and everything else is filler. Jack Reacher, on the other hand, may not necessarily be a super smart movie, but I was surprised to find in it an interesting and intelligible detective story instead of an over-the-top action movie I would normally expect Tom Cruise to star in.
The main issue with this film is its dialogue. Some of the phrasing sounded artificial, cartoony even, like something someone wrote for an episode of CSI, rather than something a real person would say. I think that might have been intentional. That dialogue would fit the stylistic approach of a comic book that this movie was slowly beginning to take as it was progressing.
Either way, the rest of the screenplay is servicable. The story is not overly predictable, and grows at a natural pace. The movie has a low-key small-scale provincial feel to it, which I found disappointing at first, but this small scale gives the story room to grow, twist and turn. Some things you can see coming but others not. There are a few scenes in the film that, for just a second, deliberately make you presume the wrong thing. I have not seen a good detective story like this in a while.
Tom Cruise plays Jack Reacher, a guy who turns up when a murder suspect asks for him by name, and Jack is an interesting character to base a movie around. He is a bit unrealistic in that he combines muscles with intelligence. The Jack Reacher from the book is very tall, which Cruise isn’t; Jack Reacher in the film brings a combination of experience and intelligence, with some fighting skills. But it’s nice that he is not invincible and makes mistakes from time to time. Also, his moral fiber is a little twisted, which imbues the character with the much-needed realism. His personality is revealed slowly, as the movie progresses.
The story lost me with some of its weird choices and a few unanswered plot questions, the mixed tone of the movie worked. It has some really dark streaks but also some comedy, and even a bit of slapstick. It has action and car chases but also some slower investigative work. The music at times sounds like it’s from an adventure movie. It is an interesting chameleon.
Also unusual are these movie’s moral values. I already mentioned the somewhat dark main character, and there are a few morally questionable decisions this character makes, which the other good characters in the movie then accept. At the same time the bad guys are not vilified to the extreme and some people you expected to get punished do not get punished. I am not complaining. It’s nice to have a greyer than usual movie like this.
In another movie, such a wide palette of tones, characters and morals would not have worked, and the film would have felt disjointed, but in this film it works. This was a dark yet fun ride and different from anything I can recall seeing in the last few years.