Jack Reacher (2012)
Jack Reacher is a 2012 American action thriller film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, based on Lee Child’s 2005 novel One Shot. The film stars Tom Cruise as the title character, with Rosamund Pike, David Oyelowo, Richard Jenkins, Jai Courtney, Werner Herzog, and Robert Duvall also starring. The film entered production in October 2011, and was completed in January 2012. It was filmed entirely on location in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The musical score was composed by Joe Kraemer, performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony and recorded at the Sony Scoring Stage in Culver City, California.
Cruise performed all of his own driving stunts during the film’s car chase sequence. The film’s premiere screening in Pittsburgh was postponed after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting; the movie was released in North America one week later on December 21, 2012, where it received generally positive reviews and was successful at the box office. A sequel was developed with Cruise titled Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, based on the 2013 novel Never Go Back, which was released on October 21, 2016.
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Plot.
In Pittsburgh, a man drives a van into a parking garage across the Allegheny River from PNC Park, dropping a quarter into the meter. Using a rifle, he shoots and kills five people on the river’s North Shore Trail from long range before driving off. The Pittsburgh Police, headed by Detective Calvin Emerson, find a shell casing and the quarter used to pay for parking. A fingerprint on the coin belongs to James Barr, an ex-United States Army sniper. When the police raid his house, they find the van, the rifle, and Barr unconscious. During an interrogation by Emerson and District Attorney Alex Rodin, Barr is offered a choice between life in prison in exchange for a full confession or a guaranteed death sentence, as Rodin has never lost a case. Barr instead writes “Get Jack Reacher” on a notepad.
Jack Reacher is a drifter and ex-US Army Military Police Corps investigator and major. He arrives in Pittsburgh after seeing a news broadcast about Barr. Emerson and Rodin deny Jack’s request to view the evidence, but agree to let him see Barr, who was attacked by fellow inmates and is now in a coma. Jack meets Barr’s defense attorney, Helen Rodin, Alex Rodin’s daughter. Helen tells Jack he can see the evidence if he will be her investigator, but Jack retorts that he is not interested in clearing Barr. He reveals that Barr had gone on a killing spree during his tour of duty in Iraq, but was not prosecuted because, unbeknownst to Barr, his military contractor victims had just emerged from a weekend of assaulting numerous women, and the US Army just wanted the whole mess forgotten.
Jack vowed that if Barr tried anything like that again, he would take him down. Jack agrees to investigate if Helen visits the victims’ families to learn about the people murdered that day. Jack goes to the crime scene and finds inconsistencies; a trained sniper would have shot from a van on the nearby Fort Duquesne Bridge. An apparently spurious bar fight makes Jack realize that someone is attempting to strong-arm him into dropping his investigation. After Helen reports her findings about the victims to Jack, he suggests that the owner of local construction company Oline Archer was the real target, while the other victims served as a cover-up. Jack is later framed for the murder of the young woman who was paid to instigate the brawl.
Development.
Attempts to adapt author Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novel series into a film have been made ever since the character debuted in 1997’s Killing Floor. After being optioned with no success to PolyGram and later New Line Cinema, Paramount Pictures and Cruise/Wagner Productions acquired the film rights in 2005. Screenwriter Josh Olson was then hired to adapt Child’s then-most recent novel in the Reacher series, One Shot (2005). In July 2010, Christopher McQuarrie, who previously collaborated with Cruise/Wagner Productions on the 2008 film Valkyrie, signed on to rework Olson’s script and ultimately direct the film.RELATED:
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Casting.
In June 2011, Tom Cruise was in talks for playing the role of Jack Reacher. The following month, Cruise closed a deal with the studios and signed on for the part. Some fans of the novel series became vocal over the casting of Cruise due to the actor’s height (5’7″) not matching the height of Reacher in the novels (6’5″). Explaining the casting decision, author Lee Child said that it would be impossible to find a suitable actor to play the giant Reacher and to recreate the feel of the book onscreen, and that Cruise had the talent to make an effective Reacher. Child also said, “Reacher’s size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way.” Of Cruise’s relatively small stature, Child said, “With another actor you might get 100% of the height but only 90% of Reacher. With Tom, you’ll get 100% of Reacher with 90% of the height.”
Filming.
Production on the film began in October 2011 and was completed in January 2012. Cruise performed all of his own driving stunts during the film’s signature car chase sequence. “Action to me is something very fun to shoot. The challenge in most car chases is you’re trying to hide the fact that it’s not the actor driving,” McQuarrie said. “The challenge here was the exact opposite. We were trying to find a way to show that it was always Tom driving. He’s literally driving in every stunt sequence.” In February 2012, Kevin Messick, one of the film’s executive producers,
sued Don Granger and Gary Levinsohn, two other producers, for breach of contract over a joint venture agreement, claiming he had “helped to develop the film, renew Paramount’s options for the rights to the book, and participated in the search for a screenwriter” but starting in July 2010, had been left out of meetings with the screenwriter and the studio and not given certain drafts of the screenplay while it was under development. Messick is suing for “unspecified damages, his producer’s fees and the right to participate in any upcoming sequels.”
