Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher is the 2012 adaptation of One Shot, the first book in Jim Grant's Jack Reacher series. Starring Tom Cruise as the titular character, I figured it was going to be just a lame James Bond ripoff like the Mission Impossible movies were. Considering that it came out in 2012, it was almost required by law to be good. And it was. Surprisingly so. It's one of the few movies I've seen in my life that was just as good as a film as it was a trailer. I remember having seen the trailers and thinking that this was the kind of film that will look good in trailers, but be a boring as hell movie. Sort of like Abduction.
Lo and behold, it was just as good as the previews suggested it would be.
Now, I really like the story of the movie. It's like the A-Team sequel we never got. Jack Reacher is a great character, he actually seems like a human-being while also having some supernatural elements to his investigation abilities. In fact, it's similar to both the BBC's Sherlock and Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes in how Reacher processes the evidence accessible to him, but not in the same style as both of those. It's got a lot of nice action scenes that tie in with the plot.
A man is arrested for killing five people, and instead of confessing or asking for a lawyer, he tells the police to call Jack Reacher.
So Reacher comes to Pittsburgh and teams up with the mans lawyer to investigate the case.
I'm not going to go much further because I don't want to spoil the story, but I'll try to analyze the plot without spoiling anything.
The way the plot twists and turns is quite interesting. Even though the movie is two hours and ten minutes it never really seemed like it was slowing down at any point. There was never any time when I really felt like going off and doing something else while the movie was playing. Not to mention that there wasn't much that felt out of place. Nothing ever felt excruciating or even uncomfortable to watch. Everything kind of clicked together in the end.
It even had some great humorous moments in it, and they were even funnier in the movie then they were in the trailer.
While there are a few cliched characters in the movie, there aren't very many and they wind up not being cliches after you finish up the movie. It's actually kinda cool how they pulled a fake-out on the characters.
Now, considering the film I watched immediately before this one, I might just be praising it because it's not the massive pile of disappointment that The Expendables was. But even if it is, it's still a good action movie. That which happens in it seems like something that could happen in real life, to and with real people. Unlike The Expendables, which was essentially something that seemed like it was executed by robots in a world of computers.
So, all in all I liked Jack Reacher. It was nice movie to watch for me to wash The Expendables and The Hunger Games out of my brain.
So I give it a 10.1* rating. It might have just been that what it was following up was one of the worst pieces of storytelling I've ever seen in my life, but it was still a good film to watch anyways. Yet another thing to add to my list of reasons why 2012 was a great year for movies.
So, I'll see you next week with my full review of -Azure Striker-: {GUNVOLT!