thread for the movie JACK REACHER (cruise, pike, herzog, duvall, dir. christopher mcquarrie)

that was one of my fav things about it, the low-key and ordinary settings. reacher goes to an AutoZone and talks to the girl from the bar in a drab backroom office; reacher goes to a very pittsburgh-looking drug house; reacher has a final showdown in an empty quarry with a few trailers. it's true to the character of the city and also to the vibe of everyday middle-american life. and its all nicely shot by caleb deschanel

99% of direct to video action movies are made in bulgaria or romania

haha that's true, i have a cinematographer friend who's always shooting sci-fi movies in romania

I am totally convinced this movie is playing at some kind of meta commentary on action movies and inevitability in genre. There is literally NOT ONE moment where Reacher appears to be in any actual danger - they establish this pretty quickly with one of the more silly "hero fights off a gang of goons, one goon at a time" streetfights ever staged. Cruise gets to say PREPOSTEROUS dialogue (see examples above) that couldn't possibly make anyone think he's cool/sexy/tough. But it all flies in this universe, and we get to have fun with some well-choreographed action and a movie star being extra movie-starry (even the casting of Cruise feels intentionally trollish to the genre).

I don't know; I'll admit it's half-baked but I think there's something here. Either way, it's a blast. Herzog is fantastic.

herzog was clearly on set for like 3 hours max total

i liked the herzog-folds-three-fingers-down special effect they used on his mangled hands. also richard jenkins as worst dad.

There is literally NOT ONE moment where Reacher appears to be in any actual danger

not true! the quarry shootout is my favorite sequence in the movie because of this. there's like, 4 guys with guns and he has to come up with a crazy plan and use positioning, cover & suppressive fire to just barely get through it by the skin of his teeth. it's tense and really atypical for a movie shootout, which most of the time are just comprised of shots of dudes firing at offscreen targets until the bad guys arbitrarily die, and in which the good guys never seem to actually be afraid of being hit by bullets. it's a methodical little mini-story of geography and danger and adapting on the fly (by the good & bad guys, refreshingly)

iirc i think herzog's fingers were actually an amputee standing behind him with his arm like poking through herzog's armpit

this was good but not as good as i'd hoped but not as bad as y'all said it was ok. last 20 mins a bit silly, first 100 mins quite silly. pike is rrrrowrrrr cruise's belly is strange.

iirc i think herzog's fingers were actually an amputee standing behind him with his arm like poking through herzog's armpit

Funnily enough that wasn't written as part of the character, Herzog just showed up on set with an amputee

Herzog wasn't very good in this

I watched this a couple of weekends ago

I was disappointed and surprised by how BORING it was. I dunno if it was lack of music or dialogue or something but there seemed to be whole sections where people just kinda wandered around not talking. I liked the way the car chases and action was filmed for the most part, it just seemed a bit more, idk, laid back? That's not the right word but almost all the intensity of the story was kind of gone from the movie I felt. Like, I couldn't put that book DOWN to find out how it all played out...but somehow the urgency was missing on screen.

Cruise was good inhabiting the personality of Reacher, in general, but when he really had to put the screws on and be threatening he just seemed more whiny and pleading than menacing

(spoilery stuff here. sorry but I gotta)

I didn't like the way they rearranged the story so that the lawyer finds out Banks had amnesia at the END. Made no sense to me at all.

I quite liked Herzog though.

i watched this on a plane, i liked it more than i thought i would

cruise was good, made me forget that he was tom cruise a lil', i thought he was wearing a prosthetic nose, i guess i never realized how big his schnozzer is, or maybe there are just a lot of shots of him in profile.

i guess what never meshed for me and added a touch of the bathos was herzog as the siberian prisoner of war who chewed off 4 of his fingers and went blind in on eye, all so that he could ... bilk public funds by buying out locally owned construction companies. that was kind of lol for me

when herzog's guys fuck up and they're in the car, and herzog calls them and lets them know they've fucked up, and the driver just goes 'fuck!' and you can clearly see his mangled and dismembered hand. that was lol

i was confused that you could get fingerprints off a coin. i woulda thought they are handled so much that all the fingerprint oils just cover the coin in a fine sheen

i guess what never meshed for me and added a touch of the bathos was herzog as the siberian prisoner of war who chewed off 4 of his fingers and went blind in on eye, all so that he could ... bilk public funds by buying out locally owned construction companies. that was kind of lol for me

hah yeah i kinda wish they played up that contrast more

i liked the shootout in the quarrie, good concept. what was that one movie about enemy snipers? enemy at the gates? never saw that.

i lol'd when duvall acts as a decoy and cruise quietly comes out and shoots two of them in the back. cut to duvall "HAHA SUCK IT!!!"

i was so put off by tom cruise's nose in this movie that i decided to do a google search

http://i.imgur.com/MjGh6Ua.png

cruise has always had a big broken nose. thats how he and dustin hoffman played bros!

nose bros

nos

Friendzose bose? Nose. Alose.

ive decided this is a total Dad Movie, i just need a test audience of Dads to find out for sure

― turds (Hungry4Ass), Wednesday, 8 May 2013 01:41 (4 months ago) Permalink

thumbs up from me

motivation of the herzog crew was a little murky to me but whatever. rosamund pike was good but there were scenes where her performance belonged in a romcom as an uptight lawyer learning to loosen up thanks to a handsome single blue collar dude.

thought this was pretty brutal for a PG-13 flick.

haha nice call on pike

mcquarrie has his flaws for sure but this has a lot of the elements more action films should make an effort to include, at least stylistically. and damn, the reach was so harsh on that decoy girl in the bar.

Also cruise's chest was uncanny valley weird.

he looks amazing for a 50-something but hes probably getting to the point where he should be judicious with the chest-baring.

I'm not sure why this movie was the one that made me first notice the schnozz. i was watching clips from mission impossible and damn it's pretty noticeable there too

my coworker who is consummate early 40s suburban dad thought this movie was the shit

We need .gifs of the bar gals making googley eyes at him.

(Cruise, not mh's coworker.)

why did the ppl at the bus stop help hide him. "white guy getting chased by cops? not on my watch"

fuck the police imo

zzz

hey so was the second of these like worth bothering with like at all

still gotta see the second J-Reach, it's streaming and i'm tempted. The first one was the most pleasant mainstream B-movie action surprise I've had in recent memory aside from A Walk Among the Tombstones.

the Zwick factor is a potential red flag though. Love me some Glory but he feels underqualified for the kind of "swift blow to the solar plexus" type filmmaking required in this very brief, and now i'm sure finished, franchise.

yeah thats my feeling exactly

watching three amigos instead

jack reacher 2 was a drag imo three amigos the right choice

Reacher 2 is awful

Cruise has since learned not to do a sequel without McQuarrie. Three Missions in a row, he’s signed on for Live Die Repeat Repeat, and on-set for Maverick 2, not starring James Garner.

McQuarrie is a pretty exceptional action director in a way that's a bit throwback, he's not a sloppy shaky cam guy who draws attention to himself, which is a gift that should be cherished. I also keep forgetting that Jack Reacher was only his second directorial credit, with the MI flicks being his third and fourth. I think a lot of folks maybe gave Bryan Singer the credit for him having a career but it seems obvious it should be the other way around, considering the skill level McQ is operating at vs the extremely boring and pedestrian career of Singer.

McQuarrie also came on MI: Ghost Protocol midway through production to rewrite & 2nd-chair direct

(this all escaped me until this year bcz I avoid Cruise, but after catching up on the last 3 am on the path to standom enough that I’m even considering watching a WWII pic directed by Singer)

I watched Three Amigos recently and to my shock and horror it was not holding up

I have so much Zwick malaise I still havent watched Reacher 2. I have it sitting on my dvr like the telltale heart but i just cant because I ~know~ i’m going to be a) bored or b) annoyed or c) both and I don’t want that.

McQuarrie’s really building a rep as a solid go-to for legit action, I am ~loving~ what he’s done lately.

The Paris car chase in the new MI movie checked so many boxes for me. Helicopter chase got kinda bloated & dumb but somehow the audacity of it still made it fun. And he’s kept this run so watchable! I do kinda miss having a diff director for each, but he’s doing such a good job it’s not a big quibble for me.

Then again, the bar for car chases is so low these days that i’m over the moon if i get to see how fast a car is going ~in relation to other vehicles~ instead of just dramatic music & closeups of tense faces.

There's a scene in reacher 2 where they kinda run slowly across a town square while being chased, and it is awful

https://youtu.be/siVcDJj1qyw
Endless running movie

ugh god i hate it i should just delete it off my dvr shouldnt i

Yes. Robin from How I Met Your Mother is a dreadful actor and it has zero Werner Herzog.

three amigos far better than id feared and robin from himym is an angel placed on this earth u savage

author of reacher novels:

"The idea is that when Reacher walks into a room, you're all a little nervous just for that first minute. And Cruise, for all his talent, didn't have that physicality.

"So what I've decided to do is - there won't be any more movies with Tom Cruise. Instead we're going to take it to Netflix or something like that. Long form streaming television, with a completely new actor.

"And I want all those readers who were upset about Tom Cruise to help me out - participate in choosing the right actor for the TV series. We're rebooting and starting over and we're going to try and find the perfect guy."

danny devito or gtfo