2012's Jack Reacher: Tolerably Mediocre

Imagine with me that an ice cream critic named Johnny Chill was to walk into an American strip mall grocery. The store's nothing special, just your average road trip one-stop-shop. Chill has tasted ice cream from all around the world, anything and everything from premium, fresh-off-the-line Haagen-Dasz in Belgium to the stuff you buy from a Kroger in Milwaukee. How impressed do you think he'll be with the ice cream from the freezer in the grocery? Now, Angela walks into the store after Chill, frustrated by the fact that her two cranky children are demanding ice cream and that earlier, she had made them an ill-conceived promise. Holding up her end of a regrettable bargain, she grabs the first chocolate-and-vanilla mix she sees. Do you think that would satisfy her kids? Well absolutely, you might say. I like to think of analogies such as these as a good illustration of why critics and audiences can never seem to agree on action movies. Audiences want cinematic ice cream to tide them over on a quiet afternoon; the more bombastic, the better. If they find themselves entertained, then the particular flavor of action movie they chose gets a thumbs-up. However, critics are pickier, in part because they've seen so many action movies. Milwaukee grocery ice cream doesn't satisfy them anymore because, one, they've eaten so much of it, and two, they've tasted the very best that the world of ice cream has to offer, and for some reason, went to school to learn how to write papers elaborating how exactly different ice cream brands make them feel. Enter 2012's Jack Reacher. This is about as vanilla-flavored a movie as I've seen all year. It's not terrible, but nothing about it gave me any compelling reason to watch it all the way through, though I did so that I could have a good grasp on this review for your sake.

I'm trying to streamline and evolve my reviews a little bit and improve my writing, so from now on, I'm not going to be including those little "this movie was made in this year and is about this" synopses at the start of my reviews. Hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen. This movie lays down a gauntlet from its very beginning, featuring a terrorist sniper targeting ordinary civilians: this is the reality of Jack Reacher's world. If you don't like it, leave. The surprisingly meditative journey into the mind of former US Army sniper James Barr, the man suspected of carrying out the attack, is unsettling, to say the least. The movie also runs with an unexpectedly methodical and relaxed approach as well, not unlike it's examination of Barr. It's far more patient and procedural than I was expecting. Instead of an action fest, Jack Reacher often plays more like a detective movie, and though it can be a touch slow in its telling, in some ways, I prefer too slow to too fast.

But inevitably, the movie began to stretch itself thin when I gave it enough time to, and its methodical approach eventually became tedious. The plot of Jack Reacher contains some revelations that occasionally made me sit up and ask unexpected questions about what was really going on, and though the conclusions the movie came to were stumbled upon in considerably less-than-graceful ways, I was still surprised. It probably won't shock you to hear that this movie likes to dabble in conspiracies that go deeper than a surface-level examination, but these revelations still contain a surprising sense of depth. The movie features one very well-done car chase sequence that uses its environment to full effect, and though Jack Reacher isn't an insanely action-packed movie, when it chooses action, it mostly executes it well. And so I found myself uncharacteristically let down by a climactic showdown that landed with about as much force as a bean bag thrown at a battle tank. This final battle doesn't use its surroundings in almost any way, and watching it felt a lot like how I imagine a rock concert with no guitars would feel.

All in all, I can say that Jack Reacher is definitely not a terrible movie. It doesn't make any massive missteps of any kind - and unfortunately, this is because in a lot of ways, it doesn't really take any risks. And because it isn't willing to take any risks, it never truly excels in any way. This movie plays it about as safe as can be, and I can't help but be disappointed by this approach. It's not like Jack Reacher was terrible. Just tolerably decent. I hear the Reacher show is pretty great, so I may have to give it a try and journal my thoughts. But for an introduction to the universe of Reacher, this 2012 action flick is a perfectly serviceable entry that does some things very well. The critic in me just wishes that it had been more airtight. And the kid in me wishes it realized that sometimes, action movies are supposed to be a little bit of fun.

Jack Reacher - 6/10

Deuteronomy 19:15