When adapting a character from book to film, how important is it that the physical embodiment of a beloved protagonist matches that of his literary counterpart? I’m not even talking about the oft brought up topic of race or gender swapping, I just mean casting someone who proves to be something of a square peg on rectangular whole – i.e someone who technically fits, but not perfectly.
It’s an easy argument to get caught up in and I certainly felt rather passionately about it back in 2012 when Tom Cruise was hired to play Lee Child’s hulking, fan favorite, independent investigator, Jack Reacher. However, considering I’d never actually read a single one of Child’s novels, was I actually right to be putting my two cents in just because Cruise’s 5’7″ was woefully inadequate to fill the towering shoes of the six foot five Reacher?
Well, now that the TV series found someone with the right attributes to embody the character (the appropriately huge Alan Ritchson is on his third season as of writing), I guess now is a good time to size up those earlier movies for reappraisal.
In the aftermath of a horrific shooting in Pittsburg claims the live of five, seemingly random people, sizable amounts of evidence point towards the sniper being James Barr, a relatively unstable former sharpshooter who served in the Iraq War. However, after Barr is arrested, he’s beaten into a coma by other inmates during his transfer to prison, essentially making the entire affair an open and shut case. However, the only dangling thread seems to be a written request delivered by Barr before his “accident” that cryptically reads “GET JACK REACHER”. What’s even more bizarre is despite the fact no one on the DA’s office can find anything on this mystery man, the guy simply shows up out of the blue asking to see Barr just like he owns the place. But seriously, who is this guy?
This guy is Jack Reacher, a former U.S. Army Military Police Corps Investigator turned drifter who seems to wander from place to place, staying off the grid and helping folks out like some jacked version of The Littlest Hobo and he came calling after Barr’s name hit the news. You see, in his travels, Reacher and Barr have crossed paths before, but while the suspected sniper has done some bad things before, Reacher begins to believe that the comatose crack shot may not be guilty of what occurred in Pittsburg. This confounds Barr’s idealistic defence attorney, Helen Rodin, who had accepted this seemingly impossible case in order to strike an embittered blow against her DA father.
But if Barr didn’t shoot those people, who did? As Reacher digs deeper with his patented mixture of smarts and sheer brutality, he starts to uncover a sinister conspiracy centred around a mobbed-up construction company that’s spread its poisonous roots deep. But can the formidable talents of Reacher possibly hope to nullify the icy machinations of the man known as the Zec?
Despite your opinions concerning the height of the leading man, Jack Reacher will always be notable for the fact that it fully cemented the now legendary working relationship between Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie before the latter leapt aboard the Mission: Impossible franchise and when stunt crazy. Up to that point, McQuarrie’s major contributions to cinema was penning the twisty script to The Usual Suspects and helming nasty, little-seen, indie thriller, The Way Of The Gun back in 2000, so his sudden ascension up the directorial ranks was something of a pleasant surprise. Simply put, without Jack Reacher, we wouldn’t have Mission: Impossible: Fallout, which certainly makes up for the fact that this adaptation of Lee Child’s One Shot (the ninth Reacher book) can be a little workman like in its execution.
It’s not that Jack Reacher is a bad movie, but beyond it being exactly what you’d expect from a Tom Cruise thriller, it doesn’t really stand out aside from some nicely assured storytelling. Everything about the film is crisp and on point with an interesting cast, punchy action and a sense of direction that takes some moments to some unexpected places. An opening scene sees Jai Courtney’s henchman coldly carries out the opening attack to legitimately chilling effect as McQuarrie camera obsessively picks over the details and later, we get a heart rending alternate perspective as Rosamund Pike’s defence attorney delivers character details of the ones who died. It’s this attention to detail that proves why McQuarrie was such a smart choice, but while the cast also work well with one another, the problem here mostly seems centred around Tom Cruise himself.
He’s solid as fuck and obviously reasons that his confidence and sheer force of will is enough to make up for the height difference, but it turns out that Reacher is so much more than just tough-guy shit. With Cruise in place, he’s just playing a lethal do-gooder with serious skills, however, if they’d cast Reacher more accurately, the sheer strangeness and contradictory nature of the character could have helped the film stand out more. Not only is the fucker six five, with a 250 lbs on him, the man only owns a toothbrush, an ATM card and one change of clothes to go with his perfect memory and an accurate internal clock. A good amount of enjoyable mileage is drawn out of Pike’s stunned reactions over how much of a freak Reacher and his various lifeskills is, but it would be far funnier and way more memorable if all of this was coming from a virtual giant.
What’s even more frustrating is that the “safe” choice of Cruise is made all the more obvious thanks to the wild swings found elsewhere in the cast list – namely the presence of German filmmaker Werner Herzog as the near-fingerless Zec who delivers bone chilling line after bone chilling line in that dead-sounding accent of his long before he was hunting Grogu in The Mandalorian. Similarly, Pike manages to give the female lawyer/possible kidnap bait an impressive amount of dimensions, while Robert Duvall, Richard Jenkins and David Oyelowo provide solid backup.
So was the casting of Cruise a problem in the end? Technically no, because who else would you call to play someone who can do everything? However, without Reacher’s source accurate stature, Jack Reacher ends up being a fairly average – if well crafted – experience when it could have given us a kind of truly memorable main character that we’d never seen before.
Now that we’re living in a time where the fittingly gargantuan Alan Ritchson has played the character extensively on TV, most of the complaints once leveled at the film no longer seen as vital as they once did, and in return, McQuarrie’s first directorial team-up with Cruise The Muse contains more than a few nods to the impossible missions that followed. However, while Jack Reacher is an action thriller as solid as its main character’s torso, the spectre of what might have been hangs over proceedings like a totally ripped angel of death.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 