Jack Reacher (2012)
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
One morning in an ordinary town, five people are shot dead in a seemingly random attack. All evidence points to a single suspect: an ex-military sniper who is quickly brought into custody. The interrogation yields one written note: 'Get Jack Reacher!'. Reacher, an enigmatic ex-Army investigator, believes the authorities have the right man but agrees to help the sniper's defense attorney. However, the more Reacher delves into the case, the less clear-cut it appears. So begins an extraordinary chase for the truth, pitting Jack Reacher against an unexpected enemy, with a skill for violence and a secret to keep.
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39 films that influenced Jack Reacher
What critics say influenced Jack Reacher
The deranged mass murderer has of course been a regular figure in American cinema for nearly 50 years, ever since Peter Bogdanovich's 1967 directorial debut, Targets , a low-budget film inspired by the appalling incident on the University of Texas's Austin campus the previous year.
(The scene, reminiscent of Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets, is chilling in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., massacre; the movie’s big Pittsburgh premiere was canceled last weekend.)
While these evoke any number of previous films, “Bullitt” and “The French Connection” spring most immediately to mind, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie (“The Usual Suspects”) stages them all in an exciting and fresh manner.
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 and The French Connection days; it’s no coincidence that the car Reacher drives is a 1970 Chevy Chevelle.
Cruise, one assumes, didn’t want to don a cowboy hat and pair up with an ape, so instead would have noted that the middle aged Eastwood was also between Dirty Harry sequels during this problematic period.
Reacher's bigscreen debut opens with a public shooting, a nasty bit of business depicted "Dirty Harry"-style through the scope of the sniper's rifle.
Based on the Lee Childs novel “One Shot,” the story revolves around Jack Reacher’s efforts to solve a crime involving James Barr (Joseph Sikora, a tweaky military-trained sniper accused of taking out a group of civilians — think the opening sequence of “Dirty Harry.”
This surprisingly rated-“PG-13” film on its relatively low $60-million budget is an attempted cross between Tyler Perry’s “Alex Cross,” “Dirty Harry” and – dare I even utter his name?
The sequence recalls John Goodman, William Forsythe, and Nicolas Cage trashing a trailer in Raising Arizona.
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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
In 1963 Dr Strangelove was postponed due to the Kennedy assassination, and a jokey reference to Dallas was changed to Vegas, thus puzzling lip-readers.
The 1992 Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of Rodney King's assailants led to Walter Hill's Looters being cancelled; it appeared later, renamed Trespass.
(She explains all this in a weepy speech worthy of Phoebe Cates talking about her father in Gremlins .)
When people read Gone With The Wind in the 1930s, everyone pictured Clark Gable and the role of Rhett Butler.
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Fortunately, there's no corny romantic subplot between Jack and Helen to inflate the running time, although they almost have as much palpable chemistry as Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint did in North by Northwest.
Herzog’s psychopathic role as The Zec reminds us of Oscar-winning villains like Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men”.