Jack Reacher

Tom Cruise is Jack Reacher, a mysterious badass drifter who roams the country solving mysteries. He gets wind of a multiple homicide and shows up on the police’s doorstep offering his help.

Jack Reacher opens brilliantly, with a cool, calculated, silent first ten minutes. We follow a sniper as he sets out to murder a number of random people from afar. He’s methodical and clever, and it’s just as enthralling as it is scary to watch.

Then things get properly under way and the film falls apart at the seams. It’s part action thriller part procedural crime drama, but mostly it’s just really boring.

Cruise is ok but doesn’t have much to work with (Jack is such a dull character despite his magic spy powers and Cruise’s natural charisma on screen). Rosamund Pike is talented but again suffers from being far too bland. She also owes everything she does in the film to Reacher, which doesn’t help.

I was looking forward to Werner Herzog as the bad guy but he serves no purpose in the story at all, it’s a waste of time.

The action scenes are fairly well shot but they lead nowhere. The screenplay is a huge mess, and whether or not you find it predictable doesn’t matter; it’s not very much fun either way.

This is just another film whose biggest crime is being instantly forgettable. Definitely avoid if you have better things to do.