Tom Cruise is Jack Reacher. He is a ghost, living off the grid, taking life as it comes.

He is not the exact same Jack Reacher of Lee Child’s books–that guy is menace personified is the form of a six-foot-five, muscular, all-but-silent ex-MP. Cruise plays it more with his eyes and his body language, trying to convey a willingness to be as brutal as it takes to get the job done. For the most part, it works. He pulls out all the stops.

Cruise is aided by clever dialog, and I really do like the screenplay. Keeping to the spirit of the book, though, meant a lot of him just looking around and thinking. Hard. You could almost see the gears turning. It’s too bad circumstances didn’t allow for a plot device like him talking about what he saw into a handheld recording device, a la William Peterson in Manhunter. The script does walk far enough away from the “man of few words” to give Cruise a couple of well delivered monologues that really sum up Reacher’s philosophy. Read More→