Kevin Reviews Jack Reacher

When I first saw the trailer to this film, I expected it to be pretty bad. While it was not nearly as bad as I expected it to be, I was still disappointed with Jack Reacher.

I expected this to be a Tom-Cruise-Kicks-Ass-For-120-mins film, which would have been the worst-case scenario. The trailer didn't reveal much, but it seemed to market this film as strictly an action film. I enjoyed the bits of humor sprinkled within the film. There is also a surprising amount of depth and mystery to this film which was pleasing, however, that's about the extent of the strengths of this film.

Jack Reacher doesn't bring a whole lot to the table as far as the mystery and crime genre go. This was a fairly predictable film and I didn't find any of the characters interesting or fleshed out in the least. The title character is extremely bland and we get little to no character development. I can't help but say that Tom Cruise's talents were wasted with this film because he played a role that Nicolas Cage easily could have played just as well. The character was poorly written and Tom Cruise apparently didn't have much to work with which led to a very uninteresting and one-dimensional character. The villains weren't very interesting either, which made the drama less exciting, to put it bluntly. Fight scenes were poorly choreographed, and the final action scene was just dull.

Jack Reacher isn't a terrible action/crime film in any sense. The humor greatly cushions this very average installment, but it's not enough to push me to a recommendation. Jack Reacher is a film I've seen hundreds of times, only the T's are crossed a bit differently.

MY RATING:

2.5 out of 5

-Kevin A. Millward