My Friend Luke Told Me Jack Reacher Was a Dope Movie So I Watched it Last Night and Guess What? Jack Reacher Sucks.
I love receiving recommendations from friends. Love it. I love the give and take. The back and forth. The push and pull. That’s what it’s all about—we can toss out books and movies and shows and all partake in that little thing we call the cultural zeitgeist. Love stirring the zeitgeist with friends. Love it.
Luke is a guy whose tastes I respect. He enjoys The Americans and finds the “International Assassin” episode of The Leftovers to be a mini-masterpiece. I ride with those opinions, and recognize both as reliable indications of someone I can trust. Luke likes quality entertainment. I can trust Luke.
That’s what I used to think until he betrayed me.
Here’s a text Luke sent me (without prompting, which I think is important to add):
“If it’s wrong that my hype level for jack reacher 2 is high then I don’t want it to be right”
I expressed disbelief that such a statement would come from him. He came back:
“I thought the first movie was dope”
There it was. There was a hot-off-the-press pop culture opinion from Luke, my trusted friend. Hard not to follow up on such high praise, so I told him I’d watch Jack Reacher and let him know what I thought. He came back again:
“Oh I’m ecstatic.” Then, “You will not be disappointed.” Then he called the movie “a sneaky classic.” Then, “history will prove me right here.” Then, “Give me a review when you finish though I think you’re gonna be happy.”
He was psyched and I was psyched too, but then I was distracted for a second and I started the movie before I realized I didn’t text him back. Maybe I should have, because it would’ve given me a chance to say one last goodbye to Luke before I discovered the truth of Jack Reacher and our friendship changed forever. I thought this would be an above-average military actioner: Jason Bourne-adjacent at best, dumb fun at worst. It’s not those things.
Jack Reacher sucks. I should’ve seen this coming. You know how people often describe traitors as back-stabbers? Luke is a chest-stabber, because throughout our relationship he had plenty of chances to plunge the knife when I didn’t expect it, but no, with Jack Reacher, he spun me around to look me in the eye as he gutted me through. It was an ice-cold double-cross. His eyes were as dead and soulless as half the actors in this movie. I can’t believe it. I’m bleeding out as I write this.
You’re probably wondering what kind of movie Jack Reacher has to be in order to destroy what was once so obviously a powerful and pervasive friendship. Well, let me tell you what kind of movie this is, cultural explorer, but also heed this as a warning. Movies like this have consequences.
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Jack Reacher has one of those special-agent scenes where someone says, “Who the hell is Jack Reacher?” and then we hear a bunch of credentials and achievements in relation to Jack Reacher. While this description is being read off via voiceover, there’s a montage of Tom Cruise watching a girl put her bra back on (because he presumably just had sex with her, because he’s Jack Reacher), then Tom Cruise putting his clothes back on, then taking a bunch of money out of the bank, then tugging on his jacket one last time and steeling his gaze. After that, we cut back to the guys talking and one says, “How do we find this Reacher?” and the other says, “You don’t find this guy unless he wants to be found.” Eight minutes later, there’s another part where two guys are on the phone and one guy says to the other guy, “Jack Reacher? Who the hell is Jack Reacher?” I thought I had accidentally rewinded the movie, but nope. That’s the kind of movie this is.
In another scene, Tom Cruise is sitting in a bar and this girl comes up and sits across from him and says “I’m Sandy” and Tom Cruise says, “So was I.” She looks really confused for a second and then, after a few uncomfortable moments, Cruise follows up with: “…last week. On a beach in Florida.” That’s a real line in the movie, and while it’s nonsense in context, it does explain why Tom Cruise has been divorced three times in real life. That’s the kind of movie this is.
There’s another part where Tom Cruise is ambushed by a couple thugs. One has a bat and the other has a crowbar. They jump him successfully but they can’t finish him off because they keep hitting each other on the backswings of their various strikes, and it distracts them. Tom Cruise gains the upper hand and wins the fight by using the back of one guy’s head to bash the other guy’s face in. That sounds made up. It’s not made up. That’s the kind of movie this is.
You’d think Tom Cruise and Co. are charismatic enough to carry Jack Reacher. You’d love to think that—I certainly wish it were true, because Luke and I might still be friends—but alas, this is what we’re dealing with here:
- Tom Cruise, who at one point describes himself with the sentence: “I’m a drifter with nothing to lose.”
- Rosamund Pike. This is a real fact: Her entire direction in this movie was, “Listen to Tom Cruise explain things, look skeptical, and then say, ‘It’s a convincing theory, but it’s only a theory.’”
- David Oyelowo, who, by the way, would go on to play gee, I dunno, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- Robert Duvall, apparently in desperate financial straits.
- A guy named Jai Courtney, who has a cool name I recognize but also the most unmemorable face imaginable. Try to picture Jai Courtney right now. You can’t. That means Jai Courtney failed in this movie, and maybe also at life.
There are a few moments in Jack Reacher that make you think you can trust your friend Luke. The opening scene shows a sniper taking aim at a bunch of civilians from across a river. The sniper starts firing and killing people and you see the whole thing. It’s really nuts and you don’t expect it and it puts you in an anticipatory mood for the rest of the movie. Of course, you realize later that it was just your friend Luke setting a trap.
There’s another compelling moment where the movie’s main bad guy is upset with one of his cronies for botching a job, so he tells his crony that he’s going to have to cut all of his fingers off. One problem though: The bad guy forgot a knife, so he’s going to make the crony do it himself via biting off his own fingers. Ridiculous, but I can mess with ridiculous. I’m in. The crony starts biting and biting but after a while he’s not making any progress so he gives up. Then the bad guy just shoots him in the head and the scene’s over. Totally worth the $4.31 I spent on the Amazon rental.
About 90 minutes in I was feeling pretty indignant and cheap and petty so I bet myself I could name 10 Tom Cruise movies better than Jack Reacher. Normally I would’ve looked these up, but since Luke didn’t care enough about our friendship to check himself before texting me about Jack Reacher, I’m going to reciprocate his lack of care and not do any research for this article.
Ten Tom Cruise Movies Better Than Jack Reacher:
- Edge of Tomorrow
- Mission: Impossible
- Mission: Impossible III
- Mission: Impossible IV
- Mission: Impossible V
- Jerry Maguire
- Top Gun
- Vanilla Sky? Dunno really. I haven’t seen it. But chances are it’s better.
- Uhhhhhh. Hmm. This is tough. Was Tom Cruise in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie? I can’t remember. If he was, that was probably pretty good, right?
- Screw it. Mission: Impossible II, also.
Watching Jack Reacher all the way through seemed to take forever, but you know what else took forever? Cutting identical holes in all of my clothing to make room for the knife of betrayal Luke stabbed through my heart. On one hand, I thought I knew him better than this—where was the guy who hyped Keri Russell performances and the upcoming John Wick sequel?—but on the other hand, I’m even more disappointed that he didn’t know me better than this. Jack Reacher didn’t just disappoint me. It rocked me. Now, while Luke runs off with Tom Cruise, I’m left to question the past.
To share a passion is to be known, and to recommend a movie is to extend a hand. Luke extended his hand, but when I reached out, it turned to ash. Goodbye, Luke. Miss you, Luke. You owe me $4.31, Luke.