Available for Home Viewing: Reacher

Tom Cruise works as the eponymous hero, Jack Reacher, unless you've read the books.
Reacher, the character, has many distinguishing characteristics. A former Army Military Police Major, commander of an elite special investigations unit, is out of the service and lives deliberately and compulsively off the grid. No address, no email, no cell phone, no job (unless he needs money). No car, no apartment or home. He travels by bus, and carries no luggage and no weapons. He has no drivers license and no credit cards. He does not even use laundry services, he wears clothes until they need changing then picks up more from a Goodwill store.  He is personally disciplined and highly observant, he has a remarkable memory.
You do not get in touch with Reacher, it is all but impossible. In the novel series, Reacher travels around somewhat aimlessly and simply finds himself in the middle of criminal activity. Many times the activity is a result of or related to his time in the Army. He uses pay phones and pocket change and borrows things, cars, guns as he needs them, usually from someone he's beaten to a pulp.
This is all pretty much consistent with Cruise's portrayal.
The glaring differences, and I will cite the two I saw immediately are important.
In the series, Jack Reacher is six foot five and two hundred fifty muscular pounds. His size plays a significant role in the books both as a plus and an occasional hindrance. He also is very, very soft spoken, as if his words were expensive and hard to replace. Short on cash? More than once he's staked out and single handedly ripped off a drug dealer's stash of cash.
He is confident, yet not outwardly snarky or cocky. He simply doesn't do nonsense.
Cruise's (much) slighter size was smoothed over in the movie by creative editing. In the books, most of the battles Reacher finds himself in are vicious and violent physical brawls where his size is crucial. There are physics involved in  barroom  scraps where size definitely does matter. A slighter, though fit and resourceful man simply can not hold up his end for very long in a tussle with four or five burly, doped-up bikers.
Since the story in the movie was edited heavily, which is fine since novels are much more detailed than movies, Cruise, also the film's producer, fiddled with the physical fight scenes to add more dance-like martial art than brute-force thug tactics.
This didn't really bother me too much, martial arts skills have saved many a smaller actor in the last few decades. This is mostly mythical though. A modestly skilled monster-sized brute is still going to come out ahead most times in reality.
But okay.
Reacher's real asset though is his investigative prowess, his ability to dismiss the noise and politics and pit-bull the available information and minute details. In this particular story, based on 'One Shot' the ninth tale in the current sixteen book series, Reacher is bothered about the evidence in a mass shooting. There's too much of it. It rings in his head like an extra note in a beloved song.
A generic city in Pennsylvania (in the movie, Indiana in the book) Shots ring out, six of them, five people, seemingly random targets of opportunity, fall dead.
The local cops arrive led by a detective named Emerson, played very capably by British actor David Oyelowo (who played alongside Matthew Macfadyen in the British Series MI5).
There is damning evidence at the scene, a spent cartridge, scuff marks, a traffic cone, security camera footage of a white van and at the target end of the scene the missed shot, captured perfectly intact in a liquid (Soda dispensers in the movie, a fountain in the book) and the one piece of evidence that locks the police quickly onto their suspect, fingerprints on a quarter in the meter where the van was parked.
The suspect is found drugged and drunk in his home, his weapon, five spent cartridges and the van in his garage. James Barr, former Army sniper, current unemployed loser.
In custody and dried out, Barr says nothing, at all. When asked to fill out a confession after being confronted with the massive weight of the evidence against him, he instead writes "Get Jack Reacher"
In Florida, arising from a rowdy tangle with a beautiful woman, Reacher hears the news report of Barr's arrest.
Back in Penn/Indiana, the cops are trying to locate Reacher with absolutely no luck at all. Barr has been beaten into a coma his first night in lockup.
In walks Reacher.
He reveals little though, adamantly and repeatedly denying that he and Barr were ever friends.
He meets with the young, ambitious and fortuitously pretty defense attorney (and daughter of the prosecutor) who wants Reacher to testify on Barr's behalf. Reacher cannot since he says he is not there to help Barr, he's there to bury him. Reacher had investigated and caught Barr after a very similar shooting in the Gulf war and because of politics, was forced to not make an arrest. He had told Barr at the time that if he ever heard his name in connection to any crime he would hunt him down and end him.
This is not a spoiler, it's merely the clever, twisted setup covered pretty accurately in the first ten minutes of the movie.
Of course Reacher's keen analytic sense tells him something's not right about the overwhelming preponderance of evidence. "Why would he pay for parking?" So predictably he ends up working with the pretty attorney who is only trying to spare Barr from  the seemingly inevitable needle.
What happens next in the movie expectedly and for the most part, forgivably, strays a bit from the book. The book is detailed with process and procedure, deduction and investigation. The movie simply doesn't have that luxury of time. Also the books spend a lot of time inside the quiet protagonists head. That just doesn't make compelling cinematography.
It's a very good story either way, a bit different between the two, but not bad at all in either.
As I've pointed out, it is hard to take a novel with all it's nuance, back story, character building and internal thoughts and make a good film. I enjoyed both the book and the movie. If I made any mistake at all it was watching the movie the day after I finished the book. Too soon.
A little more time between the two and I wouldn't have been so critical and bothersome while I was watching it with my family.
"That's three major characters on the cutting room floor."
"The gun dealer is in Kentucky in the book."
"They're supposed to be Russian."
"The traffic cone is a big deal." (though in the movie it isn't)
"The real Reacher is never charmingly snarky or flirtatious."
But like I said, the movie was good by itself. In Tom Clancy's 'The Hunt for Red October' the movie ended completely differently than the book, and I think both are great classics of that particular genre. I am not a purist, I like a good movie just as well as a good book, even when they stray from each other, as they must do.
I once attended a book signing by a reasonably successful series novelist. He was asked if he would accept a movie offer for his books if it meant lots of changes. His reply: "Hell yes! All the way to the bank and back."
So who should have been cast as Jack Reacher? That's an easy one for me, Jim Caviezel (Person of Interest (CBS)). It's pretty much the same character already. In the TV series Caviezel's mysterious and powerful John Resse (notice the initials) is ex-military, off the grid, a big, strong, quiet guy. Disciplined, self aware, rigid in principle, fearless and immediately imposing.
When I read the books, I'm on the tenth one now, that's the character I have in mind.
Should there be a sequel, or prequel (Author Lee Child has made both of these options available already) I'd love to see a cast change. Tom Cruise can certainly put out a good movie, but he is simply not the best choice for this particular role.
Aside from that I highly recommend the movie, and even more so the series of novels.