Reviews (also Spoilers)

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As the embargo walls start to come down it's time for a new thread on all the reviews, opinions, tweets, tantrums and interpretive dances that try to describe JACK REACHER.

It's also the place to keep all your spoiler-filled reactions until everyone has had a chance to see the film.

Judge away!

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AICN: JACK REACHER is a smart brutal suspense flick... just what I'd hope Christopher McQuarrie would make!

Now – I love films like this. Trail mysteries where each breadcrumb leads to the next – and then… eventually people are being killed in Werner Herzog’s fucking presence – because WERNER HERZOG is one of the scariest men ever. God bless him. He’s our Eric Von Stroheim and I adore him. People remain mysteries when they’re tough and when you hear the story Herzog tells about his character’s origin…. It is SO AWESOME – it’s a classic McQuarrie criminal bedtime tale – and I can’t get enough of these. It isn’t as operatic at Keyser Soze, but you can bet Keyser likes The Zec’s style.

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TOTAL FILM: Tom Cruise on the trail of a sniper? Well worth a shot

It can be exhilarating to watch when an actor finds a director they click with.

The moment Tom Cruise strides into Jack Reacher, smouldering like an active volcano, that ‘click’ can be heard loud and clear.

he may be shorter than the 6ft 5in Reacher of Child’s books – a topic that vexed some fans – but that doesn’t deter from one of his most intense, determined performances in recent memory.

From buzzing around town in a red Chevy muscle car to beating up a squadron of guys in a bar brawl, it’s Cruise at his most rough-hewn – even if he does find time for a muted smile when a bus passenger lends him a baseball cap to evade police attention.

Prioritizing intrigue over body count, McQuarrie keeps the action clean and clinical, even if that troubled finale feels like a Call Of Duty free-for-all.

The Hollywood rumour mill has it that he could be in line to direct Cruise in Mission: Impossible 5; on this evidence, their ‘click’ will be worth hearing again.

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SCREEN INTERNATIONAL

Adapted by McQuarrie from the book One Shot, Jack Reacher moves with a confident gait and streamlined sense of purpose, opting for relatively perfunctory set-up of its main character. (Reacher explains that his anonymity “started as an exercise and became an addiction.”) Various theatrical conversational flourishes, though, help give the movie a distinguishing pop. Its blend of procedural and action otherwise also fit together nicely.

McQuarrie and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel also craft a movie whose spare, dank vibe hangs over even its daytime sequences. And while Joe Kraemer contributes a serviceable score, the director also makes notable use of music’s frequent utter absence — particularly in a solid car chase scene and shootout in a gravel quarry, in which grinding gears and gunshot echoes, respectively, are artfully elevated to tense emotional markers.

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VARIETY

Best case, a role like Reacher would give Cruise another chance to tap into his single-minded "Collateral" killer, but as written, he comes across as more of a weary boy scout, snuffing much of the energy that makes him so appealing. Whereas the hyperkinetic actor looks best on the run, Reacher is a slow-moving, six-and-a-half-foot enforcer -- the kind of guy Cruise should be outwitting, not playing.

Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie's challenge ultimately centers on finding ways to distinguish his mostly derivative script, based on the kind of guilty-pleasure read one buys at the airport and leaves on the seat. The setup may be clunky and the character a cliche, but the film looks terrific (courtesy of d.p. Caleb Deschanel), and somewhat redeems its silliness through action, featuring several satisfying hand-to-hand altercations, a tense car chase and a well-staged climactic shootout in a gravel quarry.

With an assist from second unit director Paul Jennings, the pic goes out with a bang, sending Reacher into a treacherous shooting match between two expert marksmen, armed with only a knife. It's not a persona Cruise fans are likely to see again, so for auds eager to see the star in badass mode, this may be their one shot.

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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Jack Reacher is an old-fashioned type of guy -- he doesn’t use a cell phone or credit cards, he travels by bus -- and the first film adaptation of one of Lee Child’s Reacher novels has a correspondingly gritty, low-tech, real-muscle appeal. Tom Cruise might not be the 6-foot-5 rock described in the books, but he makes the title role fit him like a latex glove in a winning turn that could spawn a popular new franchise for the star, if public reaction to Christopher McQuarrie’s film is as strong as its fun quotient warrants.

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EONLINE


Jack Reacher Reviews: Tom Cruise's Latest Has Some Critics All Fired Up



Dec. 10, 2012 9:00 PM PST

Tom Cruise is back in action—literally. Tons of it, and of the loudest, most pulse-pounding varieties.
To have moviegoers on the edges of their seats is at least the intention of Jack Reacher, the latest film in which Cruise plays an appealing rogue with a big gun, a tortured past and little patience for anything that gets in his way on the lonely road to the truth.
But will Reacher fans—who already weren't nuts about the 6-foot-5 hero of Lee Child's best-selling book series being played by the, er, shorter Cruise—be able to handle the truth?
Tom Cruise hits the London premiere of Jack Reacher, his first post-divorce red carpet

The truth being that Jack Reacher is a pretty decent action movie—if you like Tom Cruise. (Critics are unanimous, however, about the "surprise" casting of German filmmaker Werner Herzog as the villain being the greatest thing ever.)
Variety's Peter Debruge calls the Christopher McQuarrie-directed and -written adaption "pretty generic" (and the script "mostly derivative") and calls Cruise "too charismatic to play someone so cold-blooded." But since when did being too charismatic become a bad thing when it comes to the center of a potential franchise? (The Bourne trilogy didn't work because Matt Damon was repulsive, right?)
"The setup may be clunky and the character a cliche, but the film looks terrific...and somewhat redeems its silliness through action, featuring several satisfying hand-to-hand altercations, a tense car chase and a well-staged climactic shootout in a gravel quarry," Debruge added, also noting one particular shooting match in which Cruise, finally in "badass mode," is armed only with a knife.
Five badass things to see in the Jack Reacher trailer

TotalFilm.com's James Mottram thought McQuarrie and Cruise totally clicked in the "on-target thriller."
"The moment Tom Cruise strides into Jack Reacher, smouldering like an active volcano, that ‘click' can be heard loud and clear," he wrote.

The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy, as well, praises Jack Reacher's "gritty, low-tech, real muscle appeal."
Watch the trailer for Cruise's next mind-bender, Oblivion
"Cruise plays him with no fuss in a direct, pared-down way with little sense of amped-up intensity or vanity; he can even take a joke at his own expense, as when he's stripped to the waist in a motel room, and Rosamund Pike says, 'Could you put your shirt on, please?'" McCarthy wrote.
Well, now we know what the most implausible scene in the entire film is...

"At least in terms of his action-film portfolio, Cruise is in top form here," McCarthy concluded about the leading man.
Tom Cruise reunites with Suri in London for Thanksgiving
Tom Clift at Moviedex.com, meanwhile, deems Jack Reacher a "gripping old-school crime thriller" and writes that Cruise "has charisma and the intensity to sell the implausible role, silencing any briefly held doubts with that trademark glare—or a knee to a scumbag's stomach."

There's that word again: charisma. For better or worse.
Jack Reacher will be available for the masses to judge on Dec. 21.

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Early JACK REACHER Reviews Praise the Action, Direction and Casting of Werner Herzog as the Villain, Mostly Positive Reactions for Tom Cruise


Posted: December 10th, 2012 at 7:29 pm


Some early reviews for writer/director Christopher McQuarrie’s Jack Reacher are now available, with a consensus praising the film’s action sequences and pacing, as well as McQuarrie’s capable direction. Werner Herzog’s rare performance as the villain was also lauded across the board, while Tom Cruise’s role as the titular tough guy hit home with a majority of viewers. Fans of the Lee Child source novels were more critical of Cruise playing the 6’5” enforcer, but appeared to be won over by his on-screen intensity. The film also drew a number of comparisons to classics like Dirty Harry, Bullitt and The Outlaw Josey Wales.

Jack Reacher, also starring Robert Duvall, Rosamund Pike and David Oyelowo, opens December 21st. Hit the jump to read some of the early reviews and reactions.
Let’s take a look at some of the early domestic reviews of Jack Reacher. Be sure to click on the links in order to read the full reviews. First up, THR, who say:

“Tom Cruise is in fine form as mysterious tough guy Jack Reacher…Cruise might not be the 6-foot-5 rock described in the books, but he makes the title role fit him like a latex glove in a winning turn that could spawn a popular new franchise for the star, if public reaction to Christopher McQuarrie’s film is as strong as its fun quotient warrants.”

The review goes on to address the simple, yet solid plot of Jack Reacher:

“While the plot is not complex — it’s simplicity itself compared to McQuarrie’s labyrinthine classic The Usual Suspects — it nonetheless provides the tasty satisfactions of sturdy mystery thrillers of yore, in which you know things are not what they appear and you’re happy to be led by a capable expert through a maze of obstacles and suspicious characters to a satisfying denouement.”

Since Jack Reacher is a good old-fashioned action movie, THR also comments as such:

“…Cruise puts on an impressive show of quite credible mano a mano skills, which, refreshingly, are not edited in a flurry of cuts designed to obscure either an aging star’s inadequacy or the participation of a stunt double…Another action sequence that delivers the goods and doesn’t cheat is an extended nocturnal car chase through Pittsburgh streets that harks back to the propulsive realism of Bullitt andThe French Connection days; it’s no coincidence that the car Reacher drives is a 1970 Chevy Chevelle.”

We’ll leave the THR review with a note on the film’s pacing and direction by McQuarrie:

“The writer-director, whose behind-the-camera skills have jumped considerably since his debut on The Way of the Gun a dozen years ago, delivers the narrative and the visuals with clarity, dispatch and style, aided greatly by Caleb Deschanel’s bracingly sharp cinematography, Jim Bissell’s nuanced production design and on-the-mark editing by Kevin Stitt that never calls attention to itself and helps 130 minutes go by in what feels like less than two hours.”

Total Film was also on board with THR, giving Jack Reacher four out of five stars and calling the film:

“A superior thriller, with Cruise and McQuarrie slotting together like a bullet in a clip. Like Reacher on the firing range, the aim isn’t always true – but the misses are fractional.”

They also praise Cruise’s performance as an under-sized actor filling the some big shoes:

“As for Cruise, he may be shorter than the 6ft 5in Reacher of Child’s books – a topic that vexed some fans – but that doesn’t deter from one of his most intense, determined performances in recent memory…From buzzing around town in a red Chevy muscle car to beating up a squadron of guys in a bar brawl, it’s Cruise at his most rough-hewn…”

Variety, however, wasn’t quite on board with Cruise as the title character:

“Reacher is a brawny action figure whose exploits would have been a good fit for the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone back in the day, but feel less fun when delegated to a leading man like Tom Cruise. The star is too charismatic to play someone so cold-blooded, and his fans likely won’t appreciate the stretch.”

The review goes on to say that Cruise:

“…comes across as more of a weary boy scout, snuffing much of the energy that makes him so appealing. Whereas the hyperkinetic actor looks best on the run, Reacher is a slow-moving, six-and-a-half-foot enforcer — the kind of guy Cruise should be outwitting, not playing.”

Though they do praise Herzog’s work and the action throughout the film:

“…behind this particular scheme lurks a wonderfully evil Werner Herzog, whose rare acting role more than justifies the price of admission for fans of the heavily accented director…The setup may be clunky and the character a cliche, but the film looks terrific (courtesy of d.p. Caleb Deschanel), and somewhat redeems its silliness through action, featuring several satisfying hand-to-hand altercations, a tense car chase and a well-staged climactic shootout…”

The Variety review also points out that the Child books are incredibly violent and gratuitous, characteristics that are hamstrung by the film’s PG-13 rating.

Let’s take a look at some of the reactions to early screenings via Twitter:



Noelia Fernández ‏@noe_cherokee
Well done sir @tomcruise#jackreacher Laughed more than I thought I would! You definitively keep the action going; kudos to Duvall too!
James Klein ‏@bazun
Amazing conversation with @tomcruise tonight at the #JackReacher premiere, maximum respect for him and a fabulous film!
Gemma Pranita ‏@gemmapranita
Had fun representin’ for the boy at the London #JackReacher premiere. Go see it y’all! It’s brilliant! pic.twitter.com/vvrmWusa
Hugo Taylor ‏@hugo_london
#JackReacher is a great film. @tomcruise was brilliant. Surprisingly funny and very violent. Worth a watch if you like that type of thing.
Gary Mancini ‏@indiana_
@tomcruise#JackReacher was awesome. One of the best action films in years. Highly recommended! Well done to all involved #JackReacherUK
Be sure to check the film out and decide for yourself with Jack Reacher debuts December 21st.

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EMPIRE

Ardent Reacher fans will note slight changes to the story — as per its original title, this is based on adventure One Shot — but they are largely smart omissions, jettisoning the odd supporting character in favour of sheer momentum. [F]ans won’t find any major surprises in terms of story, newcomers will be treated to a plot that, from a brutal and bravura opening sequence, consistently wrong-foots its audience all the way through to a satisfying climax.

Ultimately, though, the standout performance here comes from McQuarrie, who follows up his woefully under-appreciated The Way Of The Gun with a control and restraint that gives great tribute to the touchpoint movies he spends much of this running time referencing. Where action-cinema has been bogged down recently in fast cuts and incoherent fight sequences, here is a movie that has Dirty Harry in its sights and ’70s cinema pumping through its veins. From the harsh to the humorous, McQuarrie marshals his pack with a cocky panache that would be admirable from a seasoned pro, let alone a screenwriter going sophomore.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS: Tom Cruise oozes a low-key charisma in muscular, thrilling `Jack Reacher'

It's important to assess "Jack Reacher" on its own terms, for what it is and what it isn't. Besides being caught in some unfortunate timing, it's also clever, well-crafted and darkly humorous, and it features one of those effortless bad-ass performances from Tom Cruise that remind us that he is indeed a movie star, first and foremost.

OK, so maybe Cruise doesn't exactly resemble the Reacher of British novelist Lee Child's books: a 6-foot-5, 250-pound, blond behemoth. If you haven't read them, you probably won't care. Even if you have read them, Christopher McQuarrie's film — the first he's directed and written since 2000's "The Way of the Gun" — moves so fluidly and with such confidence, it'll suck you in from the start.

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VILLAGE VOICE: Tom Cruise Scores as the Strapping Jack Reacher

Just why the bad guys are doing what they're doing remains a bit of a muddle at the end of Jack Reacher. Still, logic is rarely the point in movies like this (and the novels that inspire them). There's much to enjoy here: a goofily funny hallway fight between Reacher and two thugs best described as "Dumb" and "Way Dumber"; the unlikely sight of revered film director Werner Herzog portraying an evil villain. And there's the clear delight passing between Cruise and his Days of Thunder co-star Robert Duvall, who ambles into the third act in time to keep McQuarrie's relatively light touch from giving way to Reacher's grim screw-the-courts brutality.

If none of that works for you, then obsess over the joy master cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (The Black Stallion) must have taken in bouncing light off Rosamund Pike's resplendent blond hair. Should a beat-'em-up action flick be this beautiful? Follow the light, Jack; follow the light.

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TIME: Tom Cruise Picks the Wrong Week for a Thriller About a Mass Killing

The attraction of the movie Jack Reacher, based on One Shot, the ninth volume in the series, is that it aims no higher than the book: the sweet spot where the child’s appetite for heroic fantasy meets the NASCAR dad’s need for vicarious mayhem. Cruise, as star and producer, and Christopher McQuarrie, the screenwriter and director, are going for that B-movie crime vibe — a tough man, a blond, a couple of gnarled city officials and a pack of lumpen goons — with a gritty, rust-belt milieu.

In a month of films overburdened by dreams of Oscar, it’s nice to anticipate a picture that has no other ambition but hard-boiled detective-story entertainment. It’s also disappointing when the film’s modest pleasures are scuttled by more sizable frustrations, and when a little movie with big talent behind it turns out to be suitable only for in-flight viewing.

Though closer to five-six than to six-five, Cruise adequately fills the Reacher silhouette. The three-decade leading man, who turned 50 this summer, wears his years well. He is still of sturdy physique, which he irrelevantly displays to Pike, and has quick reflexes needed for the three main action sequences. They don’t match his scaling of the 160 stories of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa in Mission: Impossible 4, but they’ll do as a Cruise triathlon.

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ROLLING STONE

You can join the bitch squad and complain that five-foot-seven Tom Cruise has no business playing Jack Reacher, the six-five, 250-pound bruiser of an ex-military cop who walks tall and carries a big grudge against authority in Lee Child's novels (17 to date).

Or you can let the physical stuff go and admit that Cruise is good in the role, damn good. At 50, Cruise has a physical dexterity that makes you believe he can mix it up with five guys in a fight scene, take his lumps and still win. Cruise also catches the mental dexterity that puts Reacher ahead of his enemies as he drifts around the country finding trouble.

The skilled director Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote The Usual Suspects and adapted Child's book, has an irresistible feel for the criminal underbelly. There are many tasty characters. Perhaps too many. But it's a kick to have German filmmaker Werner Herzog around as a depraved piece of work known as the Zec. Newcomers Jai Courtney and Alexia Fast also make strong impressions on the wrong side of the law. But this is Cruise's show. And he nails it. The patented smile is gone, replaced by a glower that makes Jack Reacher a dark and dazzling ride into a new kind of hell.

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Near-rave review by Jeffrey Wells


Hollywood Elsewhere

Elemental Pleasures of Jack Reacher


Within the last week I read a comment about Chris McQuarrie's Jack Reacher (Paramount, 12.21) being "a '90s urban actioner," which the commenter intended, I gathered, as some kind of putdown. Well, take out the negative inference and he's dead right -- Reacher is a kind of old-fashioned actioner in a '90s or '80s or '70s vein (can't decide which) but in a highly refreshing, intelligent, follow-the-clues-and-watch-your-back fashion.


It has no digital bullshit, no explosions, and none of that top-the-last-idiot-action-movie crap. Jack Reacher believes in the basics, and I for one was delighted even though it doesn't exactly re-invent the wheel.

Honestly? I was fairly satisfied but not that blown away by the final 25%, but the first 75% plays very tight and true and together, and Tom Cruise, as the titular character, has the confidence and presence and steady-as-she-goes vibe of a hero who doesn't have to reach or scream or emphasize anything in order to exude that steely-stud authority that we all like. Reacher is just a bang-around Pittsburgh dirty-cop movie with a kind of Samurai-styled outsider (Cruise) working with a sharp-eyed, straight-dope attorney (Rosamund Pike) trying to uncover who stinks and what's wrong and who needs to be beaten or killed or whatever.

It's just an unpretentious, elegantly written programmer that's nowhere near the class or depth of Witness, say, certainly not in the matter of departmental corruption and general venality, but it does move along with an agreeably lean, get-it-right attitude. I love that Cruise's Reacher doesn't drive a car or carry an ID or even a modest bag of clothing and toiletries. He washes his one T-shirt and one pair of socks every night in the sink.

I somehow got the idea that the Jack Reacher character, as written by Jack Grant/Lee Child, was some brawny badass who strode around and pulverized the bad guys like he was Paul Bunyan or something, largely because he was a mountain-sized 6' 5". I've never read a Reacher novel but the movie is not some brute kickass machismo thing but a largely cerebral whodunit that believes in dialogue and playing it slow and cool and holding back and pausing between lines and all that less-is-more stuff. It has a bit of a Sherlock Holmes thing going on between the beatings and threats and car chases.

Jack Reacher basically delivers what urban thrillers used to deliver before John Woo came along in the early '90s and fucked everything up with flying ballet crap and two-gun, crossed-arm blam-blam. It has a little bit of a nostalgic Walter Hill atmosphere going on, particularly in the fashion of The Driver ('78). It also reminded me of the stripped-down style and natural, unhurried pacing of John Flynn's The Outfit ('73), which starred Robert Duvall (who plays a small but key supporting role in Jack Reacher). If you know that film, you know what I'm talking about.

Reacher actually uses a plot that adds up and makes sense. It might be a little too old-fashioned in the final act as a feeling takes over that the gas is running low, but at least it doesn't feel as if it's been thrown together as a series of wild-ass digital set pieces with an indecipherable editing scheme. It has a brain, and it trusts that its viewers do also. I've just decided that Jack Reacher has been written and shot in the spirit of 1979...okay?

I'll finish this tomorrow morning, but Jack Reacher is/was a modest but very pleasant popcorn surprise. Cheers to director-writer McQuarrie and producer-star Cruise and Pike and costars Werner Herzog (cash that paycheck!) playing a husky-eyed, Russian-accented baddie plus Richard Jenkins and David Oyelowo and others. Cheers also to the straight unfussy lensing of dp Caleb Deschanel.

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Tom Cruise Nails Jack Reacher



Dec 26, 2012 at 12:00 AM


Let me take you back to “Interview with a Vampire.” Loved the book by Anne Rice. (Pre-idiotic and all-consuming vampire craze of today, a better breed of vampire, mind you). But Tom Cruise is cast as Lestat the lead vampire! Tom Fucking Cruise. Rice howls at the casting choice. Fans like me echo it. The movie? Well, I go into it thinking “harrumpth” and it rocks. Cruise nailed it. Skip ahead to today. Lee Child has penned 17 thrillers featuring the tall, rangy, terse ex-military cop Jack Reacher. Tom Cruise is cast as Reacher. (He’s also the co-producer.) Fans howl. Child equivocates. Movie comes out. Cruise nails it. He is Reacher, completely believable even though he’s a foot shorter. Doesn’t matter. He inhabits this guy, willfully cut off from the world at large, a drifter who encounters perilous situations (against his will or better judgment) and comes out victorious. The problem with “Jack Reacher” is, of course, timing, as many a mainstream critic has noted. (Nothing against mainstream critics: I am/have been one for many years.)

The movie opening came a week after the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 schoolchildren and the movie starts from a sharpshooter’s point of view, as he scans, through the scope, his potential targets. It’s not a quick shot. His scope moves back and forth, up and down. He finds his targets and fires away – quick. Five dead in a matter of seconds, and I can’t think anybody at the advance screening I saw it with who didn’t think Sandy Hook. Just like when we saw the third “Batman” we didn’t think the Aurora theatre shootings. I’m not sure, though, that this is the place to weigh movie violence v. real life violence or the horror of coincidence. I’m not saying there isn’t some causal relationship and I’d add video game violent realism, easy access to assault weapons and mental illness (and lack of recognition/treatment/coverage) to the mix. What is especially disturbing in “Jack Reacher” is the intensity of that violence (and more to come). The sound, as in most modern movies, is amped up high, the bullets figuratively richocheting around the theatre from speaker to speaker, 110 dB plus, I’d guess. You do feel like you’re in the middle of it all and that, I suppose, is part of the point.

I was a fan long ago of “The Wild Bunch,” partly because Sam Peckinpah showed that shoot ‘em up cowboy killings hurt. It wasn’t just some guy falling off his horse clutching his chest. And I’ve been, with a reluctant, heavy heart, in favor of these kind of depictions. I’m thinking, too, to Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” and how that felt or, even further, how the psycho terror in Wes Craven’s original “Last House on the Left” came off. It felt like cinema verite, not clever movie-making trickery. And while “Jack Reacher” employs clever trickery, it feels real. It’s a gritty thriller flick, certainly dismissed by many critics – who’ve seen way too many movies - as a middle-of-the-road action movie. But I would disagree. I think there’s a high tension wire pulse that courses through it and when you meet Werner Herzog, as the aging, decrepit, morally bankrupt mastermind called the Zec, well, you’re not gonna think he’s the guy that gave us “Encounters at the End of the World” or “Cave of the Forgotten Dreams.” (The documentary director that is.) But Herzog the fictional director gave us “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Nosferatu, the Vampire” - so you know that man understands evil. And he may not be a Hannibal Lecter but he’s damn chilling and repulsive as the ultimate evil businessman moving from town to town and “acquiring” construction companies and contracts through, uh, coercion.

But what about Cruise? Terse, hardened, cryptic, doing his best to remain uninvolved in the scenario he’s dragged into …. Just like Child’s books. The premise here is that the sniper who is caught through circumstantial evidence is not the killer. We know that because we see the face of the killer (before we know him) and we see the face of the suspect who’s been carted in. Thing is, the suspect was a sniper, during the Afghan conflict and had a tour-ending outburst of sniping. We and he knows he’s capable of such violence. When he’s arrested, all the does is scrawl a note about contacting Jack Reacher, not that anybody knows who or where this off-the-grid Reacher fella is. The suspect is also beaten into a coma on his transport to a holding cell (thus, the hospital) so he can’t tell us any more.

Reacher comes into play and slowly pieces together the puzzle. Not without a high degree of conflict and potential romantic engagement with defense attorney Helen (Rosamund Pike) and her father D.A. Rodin (Richard Jenkins). There’s fights, “Bullit-y” car chases, gun play – all quite in your face. But why don’t we stop the plot description here. Whenever I read about movies I try to get an idea of the plot and the vibe, but not know too much, so as to spoil the plot developments, so I’ll honor that here. The main point is to say readers of the books will not be disappointed, nor will non-readers out to discover this character. And we Cruise disbelievers, we’ll just have to swallow another one and tip our hat.

Times and prices?

www.boston.mrmovietimes.com