Jack Reacher Review

The end of December was a quite the crowded month for movies and everyone, myself included, chose mainly to see the Hobbit, Les Mis, and Django Unchained. However, at the end of the Holiday season, just after New Years I decided to give the movie Jack Reacher a shot. Turns out that I made a big mistake in neglecting it in favor of the other movies because it ended up being my favorite movie from the holiday season. Now I actually didn't see Django, but knowing my taste in movies Jack Reacher being my favorite would've held true had I seen it. What did I expect when I went to see the movie? I expected some sort of James Bond or Jason Bourne type of series. What did I get? I got a movie that was actually quite different from those two and instead played into the type of movie/book/TV show that I have always enjoyed since I was little. That genre that I would classify it would be the mystery/detective genre. It was fantastic and I highly recommend you give it a shot.

Let me give you a quick history of myself with this genre. Ever since I could first read, I was into mystery/detective books. In second grade I enjoyed reading the Box Car Children books. Later in Elementary I was extremely invested in the Hardy Boys books. Even as I have gotten older, it's still a genre I hold on to. Nowadays there are a lot of TV shows that I enjoy that fit into this category. To name a few there is NCIS, Bones, Numb3rs, House, Supernatural, Castle, and Criminal Minds. A lot of those have to do with police forces or FBI, but that is still the same thing. There is also Sherlock Holmes and the various adaptions of those via film, TV, and book and I typically enjoy those. When I try to describe Jack Reacher, yes it is true that he does have a lot of similarities to James Bond and Jason Bourne, but the detective and investigation TV shows and books that I have mentioned is more of what I would associate Jack Reacher.

What is the story line of the movie? Well, I won't tell you very much because in my opinion the less you know about the actual story, the better the movie will be. What the movie is based off of is the book series by Lee Child. This specific book is in fact based off of the ninth book in that series he has written called One Shot. Why they started with nine and not one is a mystery in my mind, but I don't think it matters too much because having not read the books myself I was not one bit confused. Jack Reacher is a very intelligent man. He is also in the books a very large man, which might have some question the casting of Tom Cruise, a very short man. But this, however, is a non issue because the physical strength is not the important part here, it is the genius aspect that is important and in that Tom Cruise pulls it off very well. Sure, there are a lot of action sequences, but Reacher kicks trash not because he is super big and huge, but rather because he is so intelligent that he knows exactly what move to make at the exact right time. If you want to know a little bit about the story to get you sucked in, there is a secret group of people in this specific town that are out to get Reacher and they are good enough to evade the detection of the police force. Reacher just wants to be left alone, so he goes whatever means he can to bring them down, even if it does come down to fighting the police officers who might wrongly be trying to arrest him. Is it the most mysterious and original story you have ever seen? Certainly not, but it is very intelligent and fun to watch.

Overall, Jack Reacher is a very good film that had me thoroughly entertained throughout the whole movie. It's two hour length I thought was perfect. Not too short, but not dragged on. This is a movie that was obviously intended to be the start of a franchise, being that there are 17 books out there so far. Personally I would love for this movie to be the start of a very long series of movies similar to the James Bond movies. That would be fantastic. Unfortunately that will probably not be the case as it didn't get enough box office attention to even guarantee a second movie, which is a shame. It is very good and if they don't do any more movies, I suppose that means I have a new book series that has been put on my list of books to read. But like I said, I highly recommend this movie. I didn't see it in time for it to gain consideration to be in my top 10 movies of 2012; but if I had, it would've made the list ahead of Skyfall. Yes, that is a very bold claim, but true for me, so I suggest you give it a shot. I give Jack Reacher an 8 out of 10.