A homicide investigator digs deeper into a case involving a trained military sniper who shot five random victims.
Director:
Writers:
Christopher McQuarrie (screenplay),
Lee Child
Stars:
Story:
There have been a number of cases over the years when consideration for public opinion has led distributors to postpone the release of movies. In the last weeks of the second world war the morale-boosting Hollywood picture Objective Burma! was withdrawn from British cinemas shortly after it opened (and shelved for seven years) because of protests against the slighting of our "Forgotten Army" in Burma. In 1963 Dr Strangelove was postponed due to the Kennedy assassination, and a jokey reference to Dallas was changed to Vegas, thus puzzling lip-readers. The 1992 Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of Rodney King's assailants led to Walter Hill's Looters being cancelled; it appeared later, renamed Trespass. Many movies were anxiously re-edited after 9/11, and more recently the British release of Ben Affleck's kidnapping thriller Gone Baby Gone was delayed because of the continuing search for Madeleine McCann.Something similar happened earlier this month in the States with the postponement of the national release of Jack Reacher after the Newtown massacre. It was at the behest of its producers (one of them Tom Cruise), who naturally felt concern for the sensitivities of the victims' families as well as a reluctance to attract censorious attention to a thriller that opens with an assassin coolly picking off apparently random targets in a provincial city.
The deranged mass murderer has of course been a regular figure in American cinema for nearly 50 years, ever since Peter Bogdanovich's 1967 directorial debut, Targets, a low-budget film inspired by the appalling incident on the University of Texas's Austin campus the previous year. A deranged ex-student, Charles Whitman, murdered his wife and mother and then shot 44 people from the university tower, killing 14 of them before being brought down himself. Although made for Roger Corman's exploitation studio, Bogdanovich's picture was sensitive and responsible, though not something you'd pay to see in the wake of a similar spree. But then who'd want to see Gus Van Sant's Elephant or Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin this month anywhere?
The riveting opening 15 minutes is what makes Jack Reacher worth seeing. A killer drives into a multi-storey car park in midtown Pittsburgh, sets himself up – looking across the river to a path alongside the Pittsburgh Pirates stadium – and proceeds to observe potential targets, several of them children, through the crosshairs of a sniper's rifle. It's a guiltily involving point of view.
He kills five people then makes his getaway. Here we see the hand of writer-director (and former private detective) Christopher McQuarrie. He won an Oscar as screenwriter on The Usual Suspects, which opens in similar lapel-grabbing fashion, though this film soon reveals itself as belonging in an inferior class. The assassin is rapidly identified as Iraq veteran James Barr by a smart homicide cop (David Oyelowo) and brought before the local DA (Richard Jenkins), who wants a quick confession to complete his 100% record. The man has obviously been framed. But how, by whom and for what purpose?
Trailer:
Movie Rating (max. 5 Stars):
Summary:
I read the book from Lee Child also. He wrote a Jack Reacher serie and the books are ful of action with an epic hero, but in my mind it couldn´t be Tom Cruise. He is not the best choice for the main character, but that is the worst to say about the movie. Action, suspense and a little bit erotic, all you need for a good movie.
Box Office:
| Domestic Total Gross: $80,070,736 | |
| Distributor: Paramount | Release Date: |
| Genre: Crime Drama | Runtime: 2 hrs. 10 min. |
| MPAA Rating: PG-13 | Production Budget: $60 million |
Reverences:
www.imbd.com
www.theguardian.com
www.youtube.com
www.boxofficemojo.com
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