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.

Four days ago I apologized for being a little too kind to Peter Jackson’s King Kong way back in December of ’05. I didn’t care for the first 70 minutes, I said back then, but the rest of it more or less worked. But wait — I’ve just discovered a 12.21.05 piece (“Kong Badness“) in which I took the film to task for a multitude of sins. My 2017 mea culpa wouldn’t be complete without reposting it:

I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot here. I’m a fan of Peter Jackson‘s King Kong…after the 70-minute mark. A modified fan, I should say, because I’m not over-the-moon about it. I liked the rousing CG stuff and the emotional stirrings during the scenes between Kong (i.e., Andy Serkis) and Naomi Watts…but let’s not get carried away.

The point is that this 187-minute movie is full of bits that drive me up the wall, and I have to admit it feels more comfortable and natural being in a bash mode. How do I vaguely detest thee, Kong? Going from the top…

The once-celebrated, now-being-scrutinized Bronto run sequence in Peter Jackson’s King Kong

* Jackson should have included an overture of Max Steiner’s music as a soundtrack-only supplement on the front of the film, to be heard in semi-darkness before the Universal logo and the credits come on, etc. This happened when I first saw Kong at the Academy theatre on the evening of Sunday, 12.4, and Steiner played like gangbusters.

* Captain Englehorn is an Idiot, Part 1: The German-born skipper (Thomas Kretschmann) presumably knows Jack Black‘s Carl Denham desperately needs a fetching actress to come along on the voyage and presumably wants Denham to succeed so he’ll get fully paid, and yet the first thing he says when he meets Naomi Watt’s Ann Darrow is to express surprise that she “would take such a risk.”

* The ship is pulling out of the harbor and Adrien Brody‘s Jack Driscoll is so keen on getting paid that he doesn’t feel the engines rumbling and the ship moving? He doesn’t say anything to the check-writing Denham as the ship is obviously leaving the wharf?

* Captain Englehorn is an Idiot, Part 2: Since he tells Denham that the first check bounced, it can be assumed that he hasn’t been paid a dime. And yet he’s taking his ship and crew on a long and very expensive sea voyage, trusting that a guy he obviously doesn’t trust will cough up later on.

Chris McQuarrie‘s Jack Reacher was a lean, low-key ’90s action film — realistic chops, no superman moves, no jumping off buildings, no stupid CG bullshit. Ed Zwick‘s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (10.21) has obviously thrown the lean-and-mean out the window. This time Reacher is a cyborg James Bond. Nobody except for Robert Patrick‘s T-1000 uses their fist to punch through a car window…nobody. Obviously a wash for people like me, but if you ask the average idiot he/she will probably say they prefer the Reacher T-1000 to the guy Cruise played in the 2012 original.

From my 12.18.12 review of Jack Reacher: “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.

While writing last night’s near-rave of Jack Reacher I was reminded of Matthias Stork‘s brilliant Indiewire video essay (posted in August 2011) called “Chaos Cinema.” Not because Reacher exemplifies this trend — far from it. To the contrary and to its credit, it exemplifies bare-bones Clarity Cinema.

“Trying to orient yourself in a work of chaos cinema is like trying to find your way out of a maze, only to discover that your map has been replaced by a reproduction of a Jackson Pollack painting,” says Stork.

It’s must-viewing, this piece. It articulates and clarifies a lot of things that many of us have been feeling for a long while. “The only art here,” Stork declares, “is the art of confusion.”

Action films of the late 20th Century embraced classic cinema language, he explains. They were “coherent, understandable, riveting, economical, stabilizing — classical cutting. But in the past decade that’s gone right out the window. Commercial films have become faster, over-stuffed, hyperactive. Rapid editing, close framing, bipolar [something or other] and promiscuous camera movement now define commercial action films.

“Contemporary blockbusters, particularly action films, trade visual intelligibility for sensory overload…a film style marked by excess, exaggeration, over-indulgence, a never-ending crescendo with no spacial clarity…chaos cinema. The new action films are fast, forward, volatile, an audio-visual war zone.”

Stork approves of the cutting in The Hurt Locker. I’m sure he also admires the way Drive is thrown together.

I can buy “Tom Kpy3” in any number of roles — a sports agent cut loose, a profane studio chief, a MIssion: Impossible guy scaling a glass skyscraper in Dubai — but I don’t know about his playing a six-foot-five urban badass in Jack Reacher. This, at least, is how author Lee Childs has described Reacher in his best-selling series. The source novel, “One Shot,” is the ninth.

Yes, Cruise will “pull it off” with his usual command and hard-edge physicality, but he’s also on the short side. Everybody knows that. A bit of a speed bump.

I know this much — One Shot, the original title, sounds cooler than Jack Reacher. It makes me think of “reach-around.” And it sounds like an overly self-conscious effort to create a macho brand — they might as well have called it Jack Belt-Buckle or Jack Motorcycle Boot or Jack Hardcock. (Then again you don’t want anything too sexual sounding — Cruise doesn’t do that.)

Paramount will release the actioner, shot in Pittsburgh and directed and cowritten by Chris McQuarrie, on 12.21.12.

Alejandro Amenábar‘s Abre los ojos, a psychological horror film about self-loathing and self-mutilation and penance, opened 27 years ago. I was intrigued by it but less than a fan. It was definitely an odd detour flick if I’d ever seen one.. I pretty much decided “okay, first-rate film but too unsettling and therefore never again.”

And then along came Cameron Crowe‘s Vanilla Sky (’01), an English-language remake that creeped me out even worse. It’s been 22 years and change since my first and only viewing. In my head this wasn’t a film about Tom Cruise‘s youung publisher character going through all kinds of traumas and convulsions and suppressed freak-outs…it was about me and my selfishness and assholery and self-delusion.

To this day I can’t recall another 21st Century film that made me feel quite so awful as this one.

The quality of Vanilla Sky is/was undeniable — a haunting Manhattan nightmare vibe, first-rate direction, superb John Toll cinematography, powerfully acted by Cruise, Penélope Cruz, Kurt Russell (I don’t even remember who or what Russell played), Cameron Diaz, Jason Lee, etc. It’s definitely a stretch movie — Crowe and Cruise stepping outside of their safe zone and then some.

The more I think about it the idea of re-experiencing the commanding assurance of this film, the high-dive plunge of it all, is tempting, but I don’t want to drop into that pit of dread and anxiety ever again.

HE’s 15 Richest, Best Crafted, Most Compellingly Performed Tom Cruise Films (in this order and excluding all of his high-powered, robo-bunny formula action franchise films): Jerry Maguire, Collateral, Risky Business, The Firm, Born on the Fourth of July, Rain Man, Jack Reacher, American Made, The Color of Money, Tropic Thunder, A Few Good Men, Edge of Tomorrow, Losin’ It, Interview with the Vampire, Magnolia.

HE’s 14 Least Favorite Cruise Films (excluding all of his high-powered, robo-bunny formula action franchise films): Cocktail, Far and Away, Legend, Days of Thunder, Eyes Wide Shut (very well made, compulsive watchable but finally a curiously chilly experience), Minority Report (irritating Kaminsky bleachy-gray color scheme), Vanilla Sky, The Last Samurai, War of the Worlds (good film with atrocious ending), The Mummy, Knight and Day, Valkyrie, Lions for Lambs, The Outsiders.

Posted on 7.29.15: The basic thrust of Mark Harris‘s Grantland piece on Tom Cruise (posted as part of the site’s “Tom Cruise Week” tribute) is that his decision to become the dominant 50something energizer bunny of the action-franchise realm is unfortunate because he seems to have concurrently shut down his ambitious acting game.

Eight or nine years ago Mark Harris obxserved that Cruise’s peak acting years happened between 1988 and ’99, or the timespan in which Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia were released. That’s because Cruise’s performance in each landed a Best Actor nomination, but that’s not encompassing enough.

Cruise also delivered riveting, touch-bottom performances as a selfish, resentful younger brother in Barry Levinson‘s Rain Man (’88) and as Vincent-the-compassionate-assassin in Michael Mann‘s Collateral, and he delivered aggressively A Few Good Men (’92), The Firm (’93), Interview with the Vampire (’94) and Vanilla Sky (’01).

There aren’t many first-rate films that start with the letter J, or the first letter of my first name. John Wick, Jurassic, Jumanji, Jack Frost, Jason Goes to Hell, Jack, Judas and the Black Messiah, Jarhead, Jackass: The Movie, Justice league, Jingle All the Way, Jennifer’s Body…forget it.

As far as I can discern there are only ten worth mentioning, and in this order: (1) Jerry Maguire, (2) Jackie Brown, (3) Judgment at Nuremberg, (4) Jaws, (5) Juggernaut, (6) Joker, (7) Jack Reacher, (8) Jesus of Nazareth, (9) Johnny Guitar and (10) JFK. Okay, 11 if you add Jeremiah Johnson.

Apart from becoming a Scientology fanatic, it’s fair to say that the last 40-odd years of Tom Cruise‘s life and career have panned out hugely, exceptionally and phenomenally.

It’s just that the idea of Joel Goodson being five years away from the classic retirement age of 65 makes me feel that the locomotive pace of life is moving…well, a bit faster than I’d prefer. I know, I know…60 is the new 50 but still.

For me, Cruise turning 60 is roughly at par with McCartney turning 80. Anyone who was around when Risky Business opened knows what I’m talking about, and I don’t want to hear from any scolds.

HE’s 15 Richest, Best Crafted, Most Compellingly Performed Tom Cruise Films (in this order and excluding all of his high-powered, robo-bunny formula action franchise films): Jerry Maguire, Collateral, Risky Business, The Firm, Born on the Fourth of July, Rain Man, Jack Reacher, American Made, The Color of Money, Tropic Thunder, A Few Good Men, Edge of Tomorrow, Losin’ It, Interview with the Vampire, Magnolia.

HE’s 14 Least Favorite Cruise Films (excluding all of his high-powered, robo-bunny formula action franchise films): Cocktail, Far and Away, Legend, Days of Thunder, Eyes Wide Shut (very well made, compulsive watchable but finally a curiously chilly experience), Minority Report (irritating Kaminsky bleachy-gray color scheme), Vanilla Sky, The Last Samurai, War of the Worlds (good film with atrocious ending), The Mummy, Knight and Day, Valkyrie, Lions for Lambs, The Outsiders.

I can’t remember how I feel about Rock of Ages.

From “Elemental Pleasures of Jack Reacher,” posted on 12.18.12:

“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 The Outfit, you know what I’m talking about.”

Chris McQuarrie‘s Mission: Impossible — Fallout (Paramount, 7.27) was research-screened last night in Las Vegas. A movie hound loved it for the most part. His estimations of how long this or that scene lasts are to be taken with a grain of salt as he probably wasn’t using a stop-watch.

“The action is incredible,” he enthused. “The car/motorcycle chase through Paris lasts a good 20-plus minutes. The fight in the bathroom runs about 10 minutes. The helicopter chase at the end is a good 20 minutes. There are a lot of moving parts but it all moves so quickly and fluidly.

“There’s clearly a LOT of work yet to be done for a film that’s coming out in eight weeks. I’ll be excited to see it again. The music wasn’t finished so a majority of the fight scenes or chases weren’t scored — nothing but the sounds of roaring, screeching cars, and that was so amazing. I hope they keep it like that.

“And the cast — Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Michelle Monaghan, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris, Wes Bentley, Angela Bassett — is so perfect. Even if I had some qualms about where certain characters’ allegiance truly lies at the end, it really doesn’t matter a whole lot.

“I’d 100% see it in a theater if I were you. It’s gorgeous. It’s loud. It’s fun.

“Vanessa Kirby is only in a few scenes, but she was the standout for me. The woman just oozes sexuality.

“Tell your friends Chris McQuarrie and J.J. Abrams to trust the audience a little more and rely less on five-minute-long dialogue scenes of exposition that explain every part of every plan. Then again better to make things crystal clear than to obscure the narrative, I suppose.”

Response to Vegas guy assessment from back east: “This is very good news. Action movies have become so dumbed-down and compromised that you can’t help but appreciate the choice cinematic thrills of these Mission: Impossible movies.

“Tom Cruise — I don’t know how this guy does it. Edge of Tomorrow, Jack Reacher, American Made. He’s a great action star. I just wish he could pick more dramatic roles because he really is just a great actor.”

Consider portions of Scott Mendelsohn’s Forbes analysis of how American Made, the Tom Cruise ’80s drug-smuggling drama, performed this weekend with Joe and Jane Popcorn. It made just over $17 million, although it got edged out by Clarabelle, the Killer Clown.

Excerpt #1: American Made, Mendelsohn writes, “had nothing to sell except Tom Cruise in a leading role.” In other words, the movie itself — a lively, better-than-decent, true-life saga of an airline pilot who got rich from hauling Columbian cartel cocaine but also landed in a heap of trouble — isn’t sellable. Why? Because it doesn’t have any brand recognition elements to attract the lowest-common-denominator dumbshits.

What kind of stinking bullshit is that? I’ll tell you what kind it is. The kind of stinking bullshit assumption that studio suits, agents and marketing executives throw at each other 24/7.

By the same token if Cruise were to star in a Michael Mann remake of The Bridge on the River Kwai, these same assholes would say “we have nothing to sell except Cruise in a leading role.” Okay, with a wooden bridge being blown up at the end, they might add, but what is that compared to the kind of eye-popping spectacle delivered by any Batman, Wonder Woman or Black Panther flick? You sickening scuzballs, I would reply — please hold still while I spit in your face.

Excerpt #2: American Made‘s $17 million represents Cruise’s “lowest wide weekend debut since the 12.21.12 debut of Jack Reacher,” which started out with $15 million but finished up with a modest but not bad $80 million. I saw and really admired Jack Reacher, and a lot of people obviously agreed with me. And yet Mendelsohn is describing it in losing terms.

Mendelsohn is also calling this weekend’s $17 million haul Cruise’s “second-lowest wide-release debut” since Jerry Maguire back in December of 1996.” Cameron Crowe‘s sports-agent drama earned $17,084,296 after opening on 12.13.96, but in 2017 terms that comes to $26,446,000 so there goes that fucking analogy. Mendelsohn acknowledges the inflation factor later in the piece, except he claims that $17,084,296 in 1996 dollars equals $34 million today.

Excerpt #3: “The mid-1990’s was a time when a well-liked Tom Cruise movie could leg it to $125 million domestic from a $15 to $20 million debut because the movie business as a whole was much less frontloaded,” Mendelsohn states. “So now instead of legging it to $100 million, a well-received, well-reviewed movie like American Made will be thrilled to crawl to $60m from a $16.5m debut.”

That’s an accurate read. Audiences are much, much dumber and more distracted today. And Cruise’s rep was more stellar and gleaming back then — for the last 17 years he’s carved a rep as the energizer bunny of action films who can never be rich enough, who won’t stop and who refuses to let age slow him down even slightly.

Excerpt #4: American Made is “Cruise’s first starring vehicle since Valkyrie that isn’t a franchise-friendly, sci-fi or hard-action extravaganza.” On top of which it’s “one of Cruise’s lowest-grossing movies in 21 years partially because it’s his first old-school star vehicle in a generation.” Translation: He’s not an energizer bunny this time — “never holds a gun, never runs and if anything spends much of the movie being played and/or in over his head.” The fact that the 55-year-old Cruise is playing a guy in his early to mid 40s with a hot-blonde wife in her early 30s doesn’t seem to cut much ice.

Except #5: So is American Made‘s $17 million opener and projected $60 million total “a disappointment,” Mendelsohn asks, “or is it a validation of Cruise’s star power when Brad Pitt‘s Allied opens with just $12.7 million, Adam Sandler is at Netflix and the likes of Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey and Harrison Ford haven’t had a hit theatrical star vehicle (outside of sequels to their former franchises) in ages?” He seems to agree that $60 million plus whatever it does overseas will be regarded as a modestly successful haul” unless it performs like Oblivion, the second Jack Reacher or The Mummy and only manifests a 2.4 multiplier, which would result in a domestic tally $40 million or thereabouts…bust.

But God, that first statement — “American Made has nothing to sell except Tom Cruise in a leading role” — burns my ass! It’s another reminder that multiplex and big-studio-release-wise, we’re living on a planet of ape-like retards — a mass audience that processes everything like a drooling ADD dumbass and thereby refuses to patronize a film that doesn’t have big, easily recognizable dumbshit elements to sell. It’s the way of the megaplex world today. The cretins are running the asylum.