FILM REVIEW OF ''JACK REACHER" (2012)

I enjoyed the new Tom Cruise thriller “Jack Reacher," and I'm not a big Tom Cruise fan.   Since I rarely have enough time to read the right stuff, I haven’t perused any of the seventeen Jack Reacher novels about a former U.S. Army investigator who roams the country like a lone wolf.  Sounds like Cruise is prospecting for another franchise to topline.  Award-winning, bestselling author Lee Child--who writes those novels--is an interesting fellow himself.  Actually, Jim Grant is his real name, and he was born in 1954. A former Granada Television producer, he hails from Great Britain, but has since moved to America.  He has acknowledged that Cruise looks nothing like his literary character.  Nevertheless, he has nothing but praise this Hollywood adaptation by writer & director Christopher McQuarrie.  Chris Hemsworth, Dwayne Johnson, and Liam Neeson might have been better as Child's hero.  Meantime, this intelligent but contrived murder/mystery couldn’t have been released at a more inopportune time.  It will be interesting to see how other major Hollywood blockbusters about gun-toting heroes fare in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.  The worst thing you can say about “Jack Reacher” is that it is a gritty but formulaic police procedural with murky bad guys conducting calculated criminal acts of aggression.  No maniacs break into elementary schools and murder innocent lambs without a qualm. As exemplary as "Jack Reacher" is, this Paramount Pictures release doesn't eclipse better Cruises epics, such as "Collateral," "Top Gun," "Mission Impossible 2," "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol," and "The Last Samurai." 

Basically, “Jack Reacher” (*** OUT OF ****) qualifies as an energetic, above-average, but predictable murder mystery.  Tom Cruise and attractive leading lady Rosamund Pike kindle little chemistry.  At an imposing 130 minutes, “Jack Reacher” couldn’t have made time for a romance between the itinerant hero and the district attorney’s virtuous daughter.  Several scenes are questionable and some things just don’t seem right.  Happily, “Jack Reacher” boasts more hits than misses.  A restrained Cruise appears to be channeling Paul Newman with his laconic performance, but “Jack Reacher” isn’t a role that fits him like a glove.  Basically, this Spartan, low-key thriller could have used a rewrite or two to sharpen it.  Moreover, if screen veteran Robert Duvall—long past his prime—hadn’t shown up for the bullet-blasting finale, “Jack Reacher” wouldn’t be worth jack.  Comparisons between the film and a synopsis of the novel indicate writer & director Christopher McQuarrie hasn’t deviated drastically from the source material.  Consequently, “Jack Reacher” amounts to an origins epic.  Cruise plays an enigmatic character, not unlike the Jim Caviezel character John Reese in CBS-TV series “Person of Interest.”  Resourceful guys like these two live off the grid.  The chief difference is Reacher shuns the kind of high tech support Reese has in the form of computer genius Harold Finch. 

When a deadly sniper guns down several people in broad daylight without warning in Pittsburgh, the local authorities get a break and capture the unsuspecting assassin.  The local District Attorney tries to bully a confession out of their suspect, ex-Army sniper James Barr (Joseph Sikora of “Safe”), but Barr refuses to cooperate.  Instead, he asks them to contact Jack Reacher.  Before his case comes up for trial, Barr is badly beaten up in prison and his life hangs in the balance.  Out of nowhere, Jack Reacher materializes when everybody least expects him. Moments as coincidental as these made me roll my eyes.  Reacher discusses the case with the D.A., and later with Barr’s attorney, Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike of “Die Another Day”), who has taken the case against her father’s stern advice.  Repeatedly, Reacher assures both Helen and the D.A. that he is not a defense witness.  He explains to Helen that Barr left the Army after going on a shooting spree when he didn’t have a chance to rack up any kills in his overseas combat zone.  The more that Reacher investigates the shootings, the more he comes to believe that Barr is a patsy.  Nothing that the real shooter did corresponds with anything that Barr would have done as a trained sniper.  Before it is over with, our hero reexamines the casualties of the massacre and finds the answer to a cover-up that looks like it goes into the highest levels of law enforcement in Pittsburgh, i.e., the Office of the District Attorney. 

Make no mistake, “Jack Reacher” isn’t a high-octane actioneer, but it is both believable and reasonably complex.  McQuarrie keeps our trim, clean-cut hero jumping through flaming hoops throughout most of the action.  An exciting, urban car chase and a no-nonsense street fight enliven the action when a variety of characters aren’t conferring over the business at hand.  Among film geeks, Christopher McQuarrie is known as the guy who wrote the classic thriller “The Usual Suspects.”  Not only did McQuarrie not adapt Lee Child’s crime thriller about a mysterious “Lone Ranger” type who spurns all twenty-first century conveniences to solve crime, but he also directed it.  McQuarrie proves once again that he is a better writer than a director.  Some scenes play better than others.  The supporting cast, including Richard Jenkins as the District Attorney and David Oyelowo as a Pittsburgh detective, are good.  “Jack Reacher” is worth seeing at least once in a movie theater.

Tom Cruise discusses the case with Rosamund Pike while Lee Child, making a cameo as a Pittsburgh policeman, watches them.

FILM REVIEW OF ''DEFENDOR" (Canadian-2008)

Serio-comic movies about ordinary Joes who don costumes and behave like superheroes are quickly becoming a dime a dozen. John Ritter played a struggling actor in “Hero-At-Large” (1980) who thwarted a robbery while wearing a Captain Avenger costume for a movie that he was hired to promote. Crackpot inventor Damon Wayans suited up as a super hero in “Blankman” (1994) after he created a bulletproof wardrobe. The 2006 indie feature “Special” saw Michael Rapaport of “True Romance” as a nobody police traffic-ticket writing cop named Les who participates in an experimental study for new antidepressant medication named Specioprin Hydrochloride. Rapaport becomes delusional and believes he can levitate himself off his sofa and penetrate walls without injury. Freshman Canadian writer & director Peter Stebbings has woven a similar but insightful yarn along these lines, “Defendor” (*** OUT OF ****), about a mentally challenged chap (Woody Harrelson) who believes that he is bullet-proof and tries to clean up his hometown. He targets a ruthless Serbian gangster as his nemesis that he nicknames ‘Captain Industry.’ Unlike its predecessors, “Defendor” unfolds as a straightforward crime movie with a hero who is truly deluded from the start and the villains are genuine thugs who want to terminate our hero with extreme prejudice. Along the way, Stebbings contributes some interesting ideas about the psychology of an individual who puts his life on the line to help others. Mind you, none of the aforementioned characters remotely resemble high profile vigilante crime busters like “Batman,” “The Green Hornet,” and their ilk. Captain Avenger, Blankman, and Les aren’t millionaire philanthropists or acrobats. The idea of a guy dressing up to curb crime is far from original; Republic Film studios made their share of serials about these crime fighters in the 1940s, but Stebbings isn’t out to ridicule his hero. Although the hero of “Defendor” is incompetent, what he stands for provides him with a wealth of dignity.

Arthur Poppington (Woody Harrelson of “Zombieland”) is a lowly, inconsequential city employee. He is the kind of guy that you sometimes see at roadway construction sites who holds a two-sided traffic sign with STOP on one side and SLOW on the other. During the day, he is unassuming Arthur. After dark he decks himself out in a black outfit, a SWAT-style helmet with mini-lights and a camera connected to a portable VHS recorder on his back and tries to battle crime. Arthur doesn’t have a Bat Cave or a Fortress of Solitude, but he feels called upon to defend the defenseless. His mother left him when he was an adolescent and he never knew his father. Meanwhile, his one-armed grandfather, who fought in World War I, explains that Arthur’s mother, Fay (Charlotte Sullivan of “Fever Pitch”), died using illegal drugs. Arthur’s objective is to eliminate the drug dealers that deprived him of his mother. Our hero’s morality springs from his obsession with comic books such as “G.I. Joe.” Meantime, Arthur’s costume is wholly improvised; right down to the capital-letter D that he duct-tapes onto the front of his outfit. The arsenal that he relies on consists of a slingshot, marbles, lime juice--he squints this into the eyes of his adversaries, wasps, and a World War I trench club. Arthur believes that men who wield firearms are cowards. People who call him ‘Defender’ really infuriate Arthur, and he stipulates that his name ends with an ‘or’ rather than an ‘er.’ As you can easily imagine, Arthur is neither shrewd nor courageous. Actually, he believes that he is bulletproof!

Writer & director Stebbings has taken an estimated budget of $3.5 million and helmed a film that looks incredibly sophisticated and generates loads of atmosphere for our underdog hero. Despite this miniscule budget, Stebbings orchestrates events so that the film achieves a level of modest complexity. The narrative leaps and lunges back and forth in time to flesh out our protagonist while propelling the film along its formulaic path. Anybody who attempts to perform superheroic deeds has got to be delusional and “Defendor” opens with Arthur undergoing a court ordered psychiatric evaluation. Again, the action goes into flashback mode, and we learn how Arthur embarked on his crime fighting odyssey. Arthur’s first encounter occurs when he assaults an undercover policeman, Chuck Dooney (Elias Koteas of “The Fourth Kind”), who has a rendezvous with a crack-smoking prostitute named Angel (Kat Dennings of “Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist”) in a remote part of Hammertown. Defendor roughs Dooney up and the police arrest Defendor. Captain Fairbanks (Clark Johnson of “S.W.A.T.”) chats with Arthur and then releases him, but refuses to return the trench tool. Nevertheless, in that rare display of superheroism, Defendor confiscates the weapon that the police took away from him. Defendor has a Houdini-like ability to show up and vanish as if he were never where he was.

Later, Defendor defends a graffiti artist from Dooney and his henchmen, but the henchmen catch up with Defendor and beat him to a pulp. Nearby in the shadows, puffing away on her crack pipe stands Angel. She tries to revive Defendor, and Stebbings cross-cuts between Angel trying to revive him to Arthur as an adolescent (Max Dreesen of “The Jazzman”) being awakened by his drug-addicted mother who tells him that she is going away. Anyway, Angel and Arthur become friends and she hangs out with him at a dilapidated city garage that nobody uses any more where our hero hangs his hat. Arthur’s only other friend is Paul Carter (Michael Kelly of “Law Abiding Citizen”) who serves as a City Public Works supervisor. Paul and Arthur share a bond; Arthur saved Paul’s son from being struck by a car. After Arthur is arrested for assaulting Kat’s father, the judge allows Arthur to live with Paul rather than face prison. The catch, however, is Arthur cannot don his Defendor outfit. Of course, Arthur cannot accommodate the court when the villains snatch Kat to keep Arthur silent. You see Arthur knows when the slime-ball villains headed up by Kristic (Alan C. Peterson of “Shooter”) are expecting a container of guns and girls from Odessa. Before Arthur can rescue Kat, she rescues herself when the perverted corrupt cop Dooney tries to force her to have sexual relations with him and she shoots him in the genitals. The finale when Defendor crashes the pier with his bucket truck, loosens swarms of wasps and marbles is something to see!

Apart from its tragic ending, “Defendor” qualifies as a good movie that is evenly paced.