So I've never heard of this Jack Reacher guy before and the trailers and billboards act like that's my fault. Is it?
It depends -- how closely do you follow the world of crime fiction? Because if you exist on a steady diet of James Patterson and John Grisham, then you should absolutely be aware of Jack Reacher, who was dreamed up by British author Lee Child in 1997 and has since appeared in 17 best-selling books. (This movie is based on the ninth novel, One Shot.) But if you, like me, don't regularly follow the exploits of fake crimesolvers, then it's understandable why the name hasn't permeated your consciousness and you shouldn't feel bad about that, no matter how hard the Paramount marketing department is working to convince you otherwise.

So Reacher is just another investigator, then? Like Alex Cross or Encyclopedia Brown?
More like the latter than the former if you can believe it, although good ol' E.B. never displayed the ability to take a man apart with his bare hands. (Maybe there's an unpublished Encyclopedia Brown and the Fight Club mystery floating around out there.) Actually, the literary detective that Reacher has the most in common with is none other than the granddaddy of them all -- Sherlock Holmes. Like Sherlock, Reacher has a brilliant mind and a completely anti-social personality. Not associated with any agency or police force, he solves cases his way and woe to any actual member of the law who tries to tell him otherwise.

Please tell me he's a cocaine addict as well.
Sorry, apart from the occasional beer, Reacher doesn't go in for the substance abuse. He's a military guy, you see, West Point graduate and all. For years, he served with distinction as a member of a special squad within the military police force. But then he parted ways with Uncle Sam and became a roaming investigator-for-hire, for reasons that are unexplained in this movie, but could easily come into play in the unlikely event that this becomes an ongoing movie franchise. He doesn't have a home, a bank account or even a cell phone. But he still manages to show up where he's needed to get the job done. And in the case of Jack Reacher, that job involves traveling to Pittsburgh to help public defender Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike, whose performance mainly requires her to heave her bosom and bug her eyes out) keep her client -- a former Army sniper accused of shooting five innocent people -- off Death Row.

So what's Reacher's particular crimesolving quirk? All these guys have one. Does he furrow his brow a lot? Have elaborate fantasies where he imagines just how the crime happened? Take his sunglasses on and off while delivering a pithy one-liner just as a Who song starts to play?
Mainly he's just really, really sarcastic. Not having read the books, I can't vouch for how well writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has captured the character's voice onscreen. But humor -- mean-spirited, cynical humor -- is definitely the chief weapon in his arsenal, next to his bad-ass martial arts skills, of course. He's constantly putting down everyone around him, be they friend (like Helen) or foe (like Emerson, the stern police officer played by David Oyelowo, who doesn't care for strangers intruding on his turf). I can see why Cruise wanted to have a go at this role; it allows him to still be the hero of the piece while porting over elements from his justly celebrated bad boy turns in movies like Magnolia and Collateral. While the actor has played both great heroes and great villains in the past, he can't quite meld both personalities into the same performance. Reacher's dagger-like quips as well as his physical prowess are supposed to communicate a sense of danger, but Cruise is too poised and polished to be intimidating. He's like a good guy playing at being bad. It's worth noting that, on the page, the character is described as being a mountain of a man -- 6"5' and 250 pounds, the exact opposite of Cruise's body type. Nevertheless there are actors of Cruise's specific stature (Jeremy Renner is one, Guy Pearce is another) who could more convincingly play the kind of grim yet funny anti-hero the movie so desperately wants at its center.

Christopher McQuarrie is the guy who wrote The Usual Suspects, right? Now that's a great crime story. Any Keyser Söze-like twists here?
Nope, Jack Reacher is a straight-up, no-frills potboiler. That's not necessarily a criticism, by the way. Thanks in large part to movies like The Usual Suspects, it's very easy for these kinds of pulp fictions to get too caught up in narrative gamesmanship to the point where the whole movie just stops making sense. Both in his writing and direction, McQuarrie keeps Jack Reacher low-key and to the point. I just wish the central mystery was actually interesting! As Reacher digs a little deeper into the case of this accused sniper -- who, by the way, was someone he knew and disliked back in his military days -- he discovers that the guy was actually a dupe for a larger plot put into motion by a shadowy cabal of low-lifes headed up by Werner Herzog's Russian gangster.

Werner Herzog?! The same Werner Herzog who made Grizzly Man and Fitzcarraldo? And who ate his own shoe on camera? And who talks like a James Bond villiain?
The very same. It's a funny bit of stunt-casting that initially provides a few laughs, but I gotta say... Herzog ain't much of an actor. Not that the movie really requires him to act so much as to utter routine lines of bad guy dialogue in his distinctive German accent. Mainly it feels like McQuarrie picked Herzog for the role to try and distract our attention from the fact that, as written, the character is profoundly boring and his motivations don't make a great deal of sense. Watching Reacher piece this puzzle together, my overarching feeling was "Who cares?" rather than "Who dunnit?"

What are the action sequences like? Anything here that equals Cruise scaling that building in Ghost Protocol?
Nah, not even close. Like the rest of the movie, the action is deliberately reigned in and muted, involving close-to-the-ground real-world stunts instead of high-flying derring-do. I actually didn't mind that approach; it's nice to be reminded that not every action sequence has to be filled with digital armies of bad guys and superheroic feats of strength. (The freakiest special effect is Cruise's washboard abs. Those things are so smooth and shiny, they must have been digitally tweaked in post-production.) And the film does boast one really terrific set-piece, an extended nighttime car chase through the streets of Pittsburgh that could have come straight out of an old-school Frankenheimer or Friedkin production. There's none of the quick cutting that you see in those Fast and the Furious movies; instead, the camera rides shotgun alongside Cruise (who actually does all of his own stunt driving) and it plays out in almost real time, with only the screeching of the tires and revving of the engines filling the soundtrack. It's the most fully energized scene in an otherwise lackluster film.

This sounds like something I might watch on cable one day, but probably will pass on in theaters.
Yeah, that's probably how most folks will experience it. In many ways, Jack Reacher plays like an extended pilot for an ongoing series anyway, although the likelihood of there being a sequel seems slim at this point. It's possible that fans of the book series will have more fun with it, if only out of relief that it doesn't completely violate the spirit of Child's creation. At the same time, I can't say that the movie encouraged me to run out and pick up One Shot or any other Reacher novel. It passes the time if you like this sort of thing, but it's not distinctive enough to capture the imagination of someone who doesn't have a crime fiction itch to scratch.

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