Reacher Creature-Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher”(2012)-A Film

Review

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

Jack Reacher, starring Tom Cruise, 2012

There have been plenty of cinematic detectives private and public in film history but Jack Reacher in the film under review, Jack Reacher, is an odd-ball combination of drifter, military cop, information analyst and mad monk human weapon. Tom Cruise, a familiar action actor (Mission Impossible film series for one), plays the role to the hilt and naturally gets whatever job he had to accomplish and then drift (to resurface again recently as Jack Reacher II).  

Here’s his task. A fellow former Iraq War soldier, MOS, sniper, James Barr is accused of a mass murder of several people in Pittsburgh and before going into a coma asks for Jack to come and help him out of the frame he was in. (Jack served as a MP investigator in Iraq himself and had investigated Barr for some civilian murders which were swept under the rug by the brass during his service time.) Of course Barr did not know he was being framed, though he might have done it since he had an itchy trigger finger. Jack thought so too based on that war time criminal activity. Jack wanted to see him take the big step off, the death penalty but something kept sticking in Jack’s craw about why someone whom he hated would call on his services.

So out of the boonies of America Jack comes to see what is what. And what is what starts with checking in with Barr’s defense attorney whose only hope at that point was to keep her client out of the big step-off. Seemed hopeless until Jack put his relentless investigative skills together after he was hired by the lawyer to be her lead investigator in order to have full access to the evidence. Once he saw that evidence, put the crime scene together, made some connections that led toward the murder spree not been random acts, he had that funny feeling that something had been staged. Something had been set up because knowing Barr who was an average sniper at best the whole thing smelled funny. And it was as the facts became clear that there was an ulterior motive working to have Barr be the patsy, Jack’s word, in some nefarious scheme. That, and the fact that Jack was being pursued everywhere he went by some rough customers, some life-takers. So naturally until we get near the end Jack has to not only use his powerful analytical skills but his physical ones as well (and his nerves of steel in a hopped car chase). Not to worry the miscreants are brought to justice, rough justice when the deal went down. The motive for setting up Barr up? See the film for that. As for Jack well you know his just drifted off into the hobo sunset.