The Legend Slayer Cometh Once Again-Dismantling Or Trade Puffing The Legend Of One Jack Reacher?-Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher” (2012)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Will Bradley

Jack Reacher, starring Tom Cruise, 2012  

I have been working on other materials and have had no recent occasion to slay the fake legends that I am committed to crushing or at least putting a dent into by bringing some light to what they were really about for that segment of the legend-believing population that is interested in the truth small as that population sometimes appears. I have made a dent in the reputations of peasant rack-renter Robin Hood once he got hold of some land and a few gifts from King Richard back in the 12^th century , impotent Don Juan the mere figment of the imaginations of some hemmed in gentile young women cooped up by their parents in some twisted sister-nun run convent, slave-trader Captain Blood who after hijacking a few privateers joined the very lucrative slave-molasses-rum trade that really built the British Empire, and most of all of Larry Lawrence the real Scotland Yard police dossier name of one Sherlock Holmes (and his minion who went under the name Nigel Bruce although that might not have been his real name before he went fugitive after Larry’s capture since I keep hearing the name Watson mentioned when the devotees get cooking on the legend). 

Going the other way as I will today although somewhat reluctantly with one Jack Reacher I have rehabilitated the sad-sack legend Will Holt the ace  ex-fighter who was working in some Sonora cantina washing dishes before he had an epiphany as the Green Hornet, paying homage to the Will the individual responsible for the protection section 21, the Earth, and the organization of the same name of 3000 stalwarts protecting the universe.     

What did all those fake legend guys have in common and notice they are all guys although I have not done research enough of late being tied up with a project around B-film noir history with fellow writer Sarah Lemoyne to tackle the likes of Wonder Woman, the Black Widow and Betsy Ross? Good press agents and flak-catchers just like today with everybody from the POTUS (Twitter speak) to your average middle school promising football talent.

In the case of Robin Hood, and a good reason why his fake legend lasted so long, he had Friar Tuck running his publicity after they had “retired” from dangerous if profitable highway robberies to gouging the peasantry using every flimsy feudal right granted when King Richard got back in town. This Tuck was beautiful aside from putting the halo on Robin’s head as some latter-day saint (small case not Joe Smith’s minions with the white underwear fetish) he fabricated a whole bunch of bullshit stories about Robin’s men. For example he had a rum-dum lecher named John Little whom he renamed Little John (for which he got a big bonus from Hood so you know he was rolling in dough when his ship came in after King Richard got back from whatever hell-raising he was doting) acting as strong-arm bodyguard for Hood (whose real names was Locker or something like that my Middle English not strong). This John Little was all of five feet tall and maybe one hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. I never bothered to break that part of the Hood legend since John Little wound up as overseer on one of Hood’s vast estates.

As flak-catcher, who every good press agent knows is necessary to balance off, make believable the legend stuff, build it up, Prince John who only could afford some half -literate unemployable second or third son of one of his liege lords went down in flames for lack of a few more dollars or whatever the currency was back then. The beauty of the thing for Robin Hood was that with Friar Tuck running point the legend could go down the generations as long as the monasteries kept producing youngsters with plenty of time on their hands and good penmanship. Don Juan the same except this time it was one of the sex-starved daughters of the nobility who kept their young womenfolk away from sexual temptations in those crummy convents run by salacious and copulating nuns who used the name pen name last name Lorenzo to keep the bastard’s legend going even when he fired blanks. Flak-catcher an easy pick the Duke of Alvarez, as mean a son of a bitch as you will ever find who was ready to according to the sly Lorenzo-created script was crazy for the Queen who was Danish and so clueless about the stuff that was happening in her and her king husband’s name. To round out just this trio of examples, there are more but I need to get to my take on Jack Reacher before long since I have to meet Sarah Lemoyne to watch the 1950s film noir The Long Sound let me deal with the blood-thirsty slaver Captain Blood who had a guy named Long John Silver running his operation until he got snatched by the British and hanged then the Captain’s cabin girl/concubine took over the chores. Flak-catcher Davey Jones floating headless out to the China seas who nobody then or now will miss.                 

Hell going the other way to grab some information on the Green Hornet all I had to do was call up the publicity department of the Green Hornet organization (they rent space these days on the International Space Shuttle so a cellphone worked just fine) and they gave me the lowdown on how Will Holt saved Earth from some bad-ass guy who had already destroyed half the universe in his lust to have it all, have all the power. With that in mine my qualms about Jack Reacher were first started when I tried through a contact at the NSA to get his dossier, his record. Nada, nothing which made me think that some governmental agency had made him up out of whole cloth. It would not be the first time please remember the David Lally case where the CIA doctored up everything just to cover up a rogue operation in Iraq which went awry and Colonel Lally was held responsible. No such guy and everybody walked away except the innocent Iraqi civilians which were declared “collateral damage.”  

I frankly got a little scared knowing that sometime was wrong, something was wrong in an age when you can find lost relatives in a couple of hours, could bankrupt the world economy one morning and still have time for an early lunch, but I couldn’t put my fingers on it. I began to think there was some truth to all those conspiracy theories about the “deep state” and their nefarious doings. Then out of nowhere Jack Reacher, although that was not his real name but we are used to aliases in this legend business showed up to help a guy he didn’t even like, have tried to have court martialed when he went crazy not seeing any action as a sniper in Iraq and free-fired a few bursts at some handy live targets so I had to check further.

Strange as it may seem some people, some guys and gals, want to be left alone, want to go “off the grid.”  That turned out to be the case with Reacher after he flipped out and left his commanding officer job as head of a military police unit to go wander the known universe. Still despite all the disclaimers I know he was still “connected” through back channels so for a long time I really feared some “deep state” noise if I even whispered that I thought he might deserve the legend that was built around his unorthodox methods to get a little rough justice in this wicked world as Seth Garth would say when I was in a working duel with him over the basic of the Larry Lawrence legend

Here is how Jack played his hand, the hand dealt him. This Iraq sniper who got away with murder over there, a lone wolf, loner guy who nobody gave a damn about named Barr was frankly framed for the spray killing of a bunch of people who were just minding their own business before they were mowed down. Captured with the evidence, planted evidence, overwhelmingly against him before he called Jack to get him out of the biggest jam of his life, a big step off in some lonesome death row hotel. But from the get-go things didn’t add up, the whole thing smelled to high heaven and Jack was hooked despite his attitude toward the crumb-bum Barr.     

Jack unraveled this one with his usual aplomb and take no prisoners policy which made him the perfect hero for modern world where governments are shy with the justice no matter how blind. Barr was set upon no question, an easy pick-off but why. That is where the rubber hits the road. A vast organization, a criminal enterprise as they say in RICO language had tried to take over a local construction company to have a base to syphon off government monies to do things like built roads to nowhere and bridges half-built, also to nowhere.  In other words stuff that needed plenty of low-grade cement and substandard steel. Problem was that that the lady who owned the company balked at the last minute. She had to be wasted, done away with without making it look like the criminal conspiracy was involved.          

This is where the action and Jack’s heroic actions came in handy especially when he almost went under the silky sheets with Barr’s pro bono attorney, a real looker who nobody would turn down with the least encouragement (although Jack seemed strangely to be immune to her charms which brings homosexuality into the picture which is okay these days even in the military since finally, military or civilian who you love is nobody’s business not the government’s anyway) . These days if you want a hit man, a hit squad as in the case here you grab a bunch of Russians, the up and coming criminal operatives ever since the demise of the Soviet Union and as ruthless as the previous hit squads of choice the Italians and Irish. That squad is what Jack had to confront (with a little help from an ex-Marine of course) to clear Barr (and save that good-looking lawyer). As usual with hit squads, Russians or otherwise, against a mean machine loner justice freak like Jack they are cheapjack otherwise unemployable poor shots who couldn’t hit the side of a barn, lucky for Jack. In the end he will clear Barr (of this crime) by cleaning the clocks of those rough Russian bastards (shades of the old-time Cold War which I barely remember but the guys who write here know in depth). Then drift out of town back onto the no grid highway. Oh, by the way justice-seeker or not do not lend Jack Reacher your automobile if you need his services. Or if you do make sure your collision insurance is up to date. Enough said about a well-deserved modern legendary figure.