Rating: C
Dir: Christopher McQuarrie
Star: Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins, Werner Herzog
Having watched the entire Mission: Impossible franchise last year, I can’t help feeling this is closer to an Ethan Hunt side mission, than anything particularly original. There’s much the same mix of physicality and smarts, with a hero operating on the fringes of legality and official sanction. The main difference here is that Reacher (Cruise) is operating largely on his own, with some help from defense attorney Helen Rodin (Pike). She’s taken the case of former army sniper James Barr, charged with shooting dead five people on a Pittsburgh boardwalk. Which is awkward, because her father (Jenkins) is the DA, who is demanding the death penalty for the perpetrator. It looks a hopeless situation, until Barr calls for Reacher.
He knew the alleged shooter in Iraq, and immediately starts to pick holes in the evidence. For instance, the location chosen isn’t the one a trained shooter would select. It soon becomes clear somebody wants Reacher off the case, a fact which just concentrates his mind. That somebody is Chelovek (Herzog), a former Russian prisoner known as The Zek – it means inmate in Russian. He gnawed his own fingers off (!!) while in jail, and his lucrative urban construction swindle would be threatened if Barr is exonerated. Reacher will need the perfect mix or brawn and brains if he’s to survive and crack the case. Fortunately, Reacher pretty much is the perfect mix of brawn and brains, like Hunt. Plus the same charisma too, charming gun-range owners into compliance with a smile. Really, what are the odds?
The similarities to M:I extend beyond Cruise. McQuarrie went on from this to direct the fifth through eighth entries in that franchise, so the parallels are understandable. This is considerably more grounded, unfolding entirely in Pennsylvania, rather than Dubai. I tend to think this makes it less fun as a result, never generating the same sense of awe as, say, Hunt rappelling down the Burj Khalifa. Reacher punching out five guys in the parking lot of a Pittsburgh bar is a light thrill in comparison. It is a little unfair to match them up, though probably inevitable. Reacher does have a nice line in snark, albeit one which perhaps tends to end up escalating situations, rather than defusing them.
However, the best thing here is, inevitably, Herzog’s intense Euro-villain (Russian, German – what’s the difference?). His dialogue is pure Werner. Either the makers just gave him talking points and let him go with the flow, or whoever wrote it must have boned up on an entire box-set of DVD commentaries by Herzog. ”You say nothing, but I see defiance in your eyes, it is a look I have seen many, many times. You cannot scare me. I made five films with Klaus Kinski.” I may have made part of that up. I think I’d probably rather have seen the film about how Chelovek got from the gulag to where he is. If he only had better hiring practices, and employed competent henchmen, Reacher would never have stood a chance.