Finally got to see one over the weekend and being a big fan of the Lee Child books on which this story and character stem from. I went into it fearing the worse…

Casting Tom Cruise to play 6’ 5” ex-military cop/lone wolf/chick magnet that is Reacher was something of an odd choice other than the almost guaranteed box office returns – suffice to say that a lot of the fans were not impressed.

I don’t want to hash on about it but rather say that Cruise surprised me and delivered here. The physicality part of Reacher was never going to happen but Cruise and director/writer McQuarrie captured other parts of this character brilliantly. The opening intro of Reacher is a delight with some nice touches added in with a clearly satisfied woman, the change of clothes before arriving at the doorstep of District Attorney’s office.

Not to mention some of the characters smart-ass attitude, this leads to a couple of witty one-liners which gave me a chuckle.

So if you’re a fan of the books then I think you will be satisfied and happy with the outcome.

But I know that not everyone has read the books so let’s narrow this down to just the movie.

It opens with a compelling scene with a sniper seemingly shooting random people and I want to add that movie did a good job with this scenario and especially giving the victims some attention later which added more emotion to their fates.

Anyway, after the police/swat rush the crime scene and find lots and lots of convenient clues which lead them to the shooter who is an ex-army sniper called Barr. Once arrested and told that he’s going to the death chamber, his response is simple “Get me Jack Reacher”

Rather than full-on action, this is more of an investigation type thriller with hypotheses and theories readily thrown up for deeper examination by Reacher who after coming into town is hired by Barr's defence attorney Helen (Rosamund Pike) to become her investigator

This is where we follow Reacher as he conducts the investigation - assuming nothing, believing nobody, and checking everything in a very methodical way, he tries to unravel the why and who is behind this. I have to say that people might be disappointed to find out that it’s not a Bond villain's “I want to take over the world” reason but more of a simple one – very much keeping in tone with the books.

For those who find investigative dramas a little bit dry, the action comes in at the right times to keep you on your toes or from dozing. I thought the violence was pretty full on for such a rating with eye-gouging, baseball bats and rocks smacking into heads with crushing sound effects. Also a car chase scene which was very stylish and like much of the movie, had a ‘70s feel to it.

It does have its pitfalls, everything seemed so easy for Reacher and you never felt the stakes were raised even with the kidnapping of the lawyer in the final act. The villains decisions after such an elaborate beginning to the plot felt too stupid and convenient.  The main one for me though was the underuse of the main bad guy The Zec (Werner Herzog) who after a great opening in a back alley where he tells a man he’ll have to bite of his fingers off to survive, really doesn’t get a lot to do.

Not much to complain about in the acting stakes, thought everyone was fine with the late arrival of Robert Duvall being a highlight. Also a nod to Jai Courtney who played The Zec’s main henchman and will next be seen playing John McClane’s son in the new Die Hard movie.

There is definitely nothing new here though, we’ve seen it all before and I can see this movie not going down too well with some folks.

But I’m glad to see it getting some good reviews and hope that this will be the start of a promising franchise either with Tom Cruise or not. It certainly does well at introducing the famous Lee Child character, and I was itching to dive into another adventure with Reacher.

Good one.

But I do wish that they had kept its original title of One Shot.

I'm a huge fan of the books, I've read all and own most of them. Since hearing that it was Tom Cruise who was to play the 6 foot 5, 250lbs, blonde haired, brutal looking, bad at running Jack Reacher I was pretty annoyed. Luckily I heard about it so long ago I had the time to go through the 5 stages of grief, starting at anger and finally ending up at acceptance. I think it also helped hearing Lee Child himself say with some other actor you could get 100% of the height with 90% of the Reacher, whereas with Cruise you'll get 100% Reacher with 90% of the height.

I think Lee Child was spot on. I really enjoyed the film and think Cruise did a great job. Don't get me wrong, it was distracting at times seeing Jack Reacher being towered over by plenty of other actors in the film, but other than that he did feel like Jack Reacher.

I found the opening scene of the film very tense. Watching through the scope of a sniper rifle as the cross hairs track various civilians, one of which being a little girl, was really well done.

After the shootings they arrest the prime suspect in a slam dunk case, he's going to face the death penalty for sure. He simply writes on a pad 'Get Jack Reacher'. Next follows a lot of exposition from the DA and the lead cop on the case as they tell us who Jack Reacher is, from his birthday, to millitary career, to his family, realising that he's a ghost and you don't find Reacher unless he wants to be found.

In walks Jack Reacher, but he's not there to help the suspect, he's there to make sure he goes down, for reasons we find out about later. He eventually gets talked in to helping with the defence of the man and the investigation begins.

The action throughout was pretty fun, Reacher was as brutal as I wanted him to be and he made me laugh a few times, in particular a bar scene with a girl that eventually leads to the fight from the trailer.

I agree with Steve that the bad guy was underused, but he was a very menacing bad guy for what little time we do get see him.

The only part of the film that really bothered me was when a couple of bumbling idiots have the opportunity to take out Reacher after knocking him down with a baseball bat, but they fail to be able to get through a door like something out of a comedy sketch from the 60's.

I can see why plenty of people won't like this film, it's far from perfect, but for me it did exactly what I wanted it to do. It entertained me a great deal and was great to see one of my heroes finally portrayed on screen.

I've heard there will be more Reacher films and I look forward to the next. I hope that it works out well enough that at some point a new Reacher will be chosen and one day we can discuss who our favourite Reacher is. Personally I'd like to see either Daniel Craig or Chris Hemsworth in the role as they look more like the Reacher I see in my head when I read the books.

So I've never read the books, never even knew they existed until this movie came out, so I can't give much perspective on if it's a good adaptation or not. Wasn't impressed by the trailers either but I was pleasantly surprised when I saw it.

It's not a masterpiece of action filmmaking, although a bit more thought obviously went into the actual plot than Michael Bay might bother with, and there were some fun action scenes and good characters. Tom Cruise does seem like an odd choice for the role, though. Nothing wrong with him as an actor, they just needed a different physical type.

It's a shame this was kind of a flop at the box office. It wasn't great, but it's a fun action flick with a good imagination and good performances from the cast. i would've liked to see more from the character, but I doubt it'll happen.

Check out Jeff Goldsmiths Q&A with Chris McQuarrie about Jack Reacher right here. You can also find it on iTunes.

As usual McQuarrie is a blast from start to finish. See if you can find the Q&A they did for Valkyrie as well, that one gives an amazing insight to what its like being a writer in Hollywood.

Enjoyed it but the oscillating tone was a little distracting. A little uneven. CM appears more a natural fit for writer rather than director.

Having never read the books, this may have been a faithful adaptation, I don't know. The shadowy threat of The Zec never quite squared off with the ridiculous Arnie-esque accent. Found it very distracting. As much as Duvall delivered when on screen, it felt like his role was shoehorned in and the climax at the quarry felt a wee bit weak.

On the positive side, the acting was generally good, and some of the ambience harked back to Dirty Harry, which felt like a great place to spend a couple of hours, but that was yanked away as the film then went somewhere else tonally.

Ended up watching this with my dad and he enjoyed it for what it is. It is entertaining and enjoyable, but there was a sense of a missed opportunity for me.

Quoted from Andrew Having never read the books, this may have been a faithful adaptation, I don't know.

It was pretty close and personally, I think they did a great job – in saying that…

Quoted from Andrew The shadowy threat of The Zec never quite squared off with the ridiculous Arnie-esque accent.

The Zec was underplayed and it’s a flaw in the movie for sure but I can understand it. The book really established his background and motives in a way that a movie can’t – this normally is the problem with adaptions.

Quoted from CoopBazinga The Zec was underplayed and it’s a flaw in the movie for sure but I can understand it. The book really established his background and motives in a way that a movie can’t – this normally is the problem with adaptions.

This is true, but they veered in the no-motives-at-all camp, which undercut the threat. Had they dispensed with Duvall, they would've created some time to illuminate The Zec's motives/backstory and create a more formidable character. They may well have strayed too far from the book by doing this, though.

Just saw this today.  Was planning on seeing The Hobbit, but since The Hobbit is an additional 40 minutes (and I only had about a 2 1/2 hour window, I opted for this - The Hobbit will be next week.

First of all, I enjoyed it.  It worked for what it was and any negative reviews are a surprise.

It's a well made, well put together action flick.  It looks good, the fight choreography is great, and the characters are decent to good.  I also liked the dark, rather brutal tone and feel.  We don't see this very often in big budget, action star movies aimed at the masses.

The downside for me is the source material.  Now, don't get me wrong here - I've never read any of the 17 Jack Reacher novels, and other than being familiar with Lee Child by name, I knew absolutely nothing about this franchise.  So what the Hell am I talking about?

Well, the "plot" we're dealing with here is pretty ridiculous for starters, but more importantly, has little to do with the "story".  It's actually almost an afterthought, and glanced over so quickly, it wouldn't surprise me if you asked 20 people what the plot was, half or more would be clueless.

But, let me delve a bit deeper into what I'm talking about.  So, this evil Russian dude has some sort of illegal operation in which they go from city to city and acquire other companies to help their illegal activities.  And to get this latest construction company, they have to kill the owner.  So they decide to put into place a very elaborate scheme, killing 4 innocent peeps for starters, and then numerous others as well.  A bit over the top and even cartoonish to me, but OK, I buy into The Zek as being this really evil bad guy and his henchmen all just do his bidding.

But, if we delve deeper, how long would this plan actually take to work?  Did the main baddy sniper dude befriend the whacko sniper dude years ago to set him up years later?  Really?  When did the police dude come under the evil spell of The Zek?  And why?  Just what exactly is The old Zek up to with these construction companies and why doesn't anyone catch on over the years?  Is he doing this for the money or just to be an evil villainous bad guy?

Because it's a movie and we're supposed to overlook these type of questions/plot holes?  Probably more like because the source material is a novel and in a novel, all the little details are able to surface and although it's a Jack Reacher novel, it's also a mystery/adventure/action novel and once an author has a following, it really doesn't matter what they write, because they're already pretty much guaranteed success.

But hey, as I said, I enjoyed it.  I think Mr. Cruise did a great job and came off very believable...all 5' 7" of him.  And, special Kudos needs to go out to Rosie Pike's breasts.  Those things were obviously carrying some serious Mother's Milk, as she just gave birth in May, last year.

I'll actually look forward to the next Jack Reacher flick.

I just want to say that when I saw that Jeff was the last post in this thread,  I hurriedly opened it, ready to be entertained, figuring that Jeff would rant about this picture achieving a new level of suckdom...

Bitterly disappointed. My world does not make sense anymore...

Sorry, Anthony. I can't hate them all!