Jack Reacher (2012)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins, Werner Herzog, David Oyelow, Robert Duvall

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Genre: Action, Crime, Thriller

Rating: B+

I am not a Jack Reacher fan.  I've never read the books, had never even heard of them before the movie caught my interest.  As such, I have no clue just how wrong for this role Tom Cruise is or just how much they messed up the book.  And, in all honesty, I don't really care - while I am all for trying to be true to the books as much as possible, not knowing the books I can say that this was a good movie and Tom Cruise was great in this role.

In Pittsburgh a man goes to a parking garage, pulls out a sniper rifle, and kills five people.  The case, headed by Detective Emerson (Oyelow), appears to be quickly solved, with all the evidence being linked to former U.S. Army sniper James Barr (Joseph Sikora).  When interrogated by the Detective and the District Attorney Alex Rodin (Jenkins), Barr is given a choice between confessing and facing the death penalty - and instead instructs them to find Jack Reacher (Cruise).  Reacher is a former U.S. Army Military Police Corps Officer who now exists as a drifter and has a history with Barr.  The question is, can Reacher prove Barr's innocence - and does Reacher even want to do so?  Rounding out the case is Barr's defence attorney, and the D.A.'s daughter, Helen Rodin (Pike), who believes that if the case goes to court Barr will not get a fair trial, owing to her father's tactics.  Oh, and then Barr is brutally attacked by fellow inmates and put into a coma, the question now being whether or not he'll be considered fit for trial at all.

I really liked this movie.  The action is great - I particularly loved the car chases which did away with a lot of the jumpy confusion typical of the genre - the humour is snappy, the suspense is sound.  I like how you know whether or not Barr's innocent from the get go, but you still get to watch Reacher and Helen put things together - and see as their opponents try to prevent them from being able to do so.  Pieces start to be put together, but it isn't until closer to the end of the movie that you have it all, and you're liable to be surprised by the picture that you end up seeing - it's not necessarily the one on the box.

I'm not going to comment too much on the book-to-movie transition, because as I've already mentioned, I haven't read the books.  I will say, for those who are unsure of Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher because of the books, the casting came with the support of the author.  In the books, Reacher is a giant of a man and Tom Cruise... well, Tom Cruise is not (although, credit goes to the way they chose to film this, which kind of hides how short he really is... granted, that's a common theme in Tom Cruise movies).   Lee Child has said "Reacher's size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way" and that "With another actor you might get 100% of the height but only 90% of Reacher. With Tom, you'll get 100% of Reacher with 90% of the height."  Yes, Tom Cruise is short, but there was never a moment in this movie when I thought that he was really anything less than intimidating and a very viable threat.  He definitely portrays an unstoppable force, regardless of how tall he is (or is not).

My final note here is regarding the potential sequel.  There are something like 17 stories written about Jack Reacher, the bulk of which are novels.  It's being reported that a sequel is unlikely due to the film's box-office performance (while it's done well and made more than double what it cost to make, it's about $100 million short of what they wanted if they were to do a sequel), I do hope that they go for it.  This seems like it could be a fun franchise; it's up Tom Cruise's alley, and really I don't need to see another Mission Impossible.  It'd be nice to see Tom Cruise embark on a new franchise.  That being said, I'm also still hoping that Christopher Nolan decides to do another Batman movie with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Nightwing.  I can't be the only one.

Die Another Day (2002)

Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Judi Dench, John Cleese, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rick Yune, Rosamund Pike, Will Yun Lee, Michael Madsen, Rachel Grant

Director: Lee Tamahori

Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Rating: C

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this movie.  While it does escape from the evil Soviets plot, the twist did surprise me, and I really liked a lot of the references and allusions to previous Bonds, it was also overly complicated, cheesy, and a bit too much.  Roger Moore said of the film "I thought it just went too far – and that’s from me, the first Bond in space! Invisible cars and dodgy CGI footage? Please!"  That's actually pretty much exactly how I feel.  I like Brosnan overall as a Bond, but this movie in general felt like it should have been a Roger Moore one - and in my opinion, that's not a good thing.

The background to this is that Bond (Brosnan) was captured by the North Koreans while on a mission related to illegally traded African conflict diamonds.  After 14 months of captivity Bond is released in exchange for the release of North Korean agent Zao (Yune), whose face had been disfigured by diamond fragments during the struggle with Bond.  Once released, Bond is suspended from active duty because M (Dench) doesn't believe that he hasn't leaked information, so Bond escapes to complete his mission.  In Havana (because that where you go when your mission involves North Korea) Bond meets NSA agent Giacinti 'Jinx' Johnson (Berry), who he follows (along with Zao) to a gene therapy treatment, where more conflict diamonds are discovered, this time with the company crest of British billionaire Gustav Graves (Stephens).  Bond returns to England to continue the investigation, where he meets fellow MI6 agent Miranda Frost (Pike), who is undercover as Graves' assistant.  Points if you guess who's sleeping with who!

There's a lot about this movie that is really classic Bond and in a way, I admire Tamahori for trying to recreate that feel of the series.  The problem is, however, that you really can't go back.  What made movies like Dr. No work only worked because of the time in which they were created.  Outside of the sixties and seventies, classic Bond doesn't work as well; that was one of the problems of the Roger Moore films.  Die Another Day fails even more because in addition to trying to grasp that classic feel it also tries to incorporate new technology, namely CGI.  The result is rather disastrous.  No, the result is horrendous.  Actually, there's more to it than that.  Another part of the problem is that while trying to envoke a lot of the old classic feel Die fails to intentionally invoke the humour and the cheese.  As such, it's a lame and cheesy movie that fails to realize it's as much.  It's okay to be ridiculous, when you know that's what you're doing - that's why Dr. Strangelove is so awesome.  If you take yourself seriously but fail to be serious, you just don't work out in the end.