Jack Reacher: Never go Back.  AMC Desert Star cinema Lake Delton WI.  October 30^th.   Price: 10.56  (with the Wisconsin Dells 6% Tax)…. (Standard viewing)

As anyone can tell you, I think you can probably see any movie with Tom Cruise in it and you know you’ll get your money’s worth.  I mean, the guy is just a movie legend.  Hard to believe this is the same guy from “Losing It” and “The Firm” and “A few good men” and “Top Gun” and “Rain Man” and “Far and Away” and “Vanilla Sky” and “Jerry McGuire”… and Mission Impossible.. jeeze, nearly anything in films.  … And a personal favorite, a real gem from early in his career (The Color of Money) with legend Paul Newman, taking up the sequel 25 years later from The Hustler (Newman and Jackie Gleason in glorious B&W). 

In Reacher, he’s a loner/ ex-military man that just finished some sort of assignment (for whom, actually?), when he helps arrest a crooked sheriff.   He makes his way to Washington, DC to meet (and hopefully date) Major Susan Turner (Played by a kick-ass Cobie Smulders), the voice on the phone that assists him with the assignment.  When he finally gets there, he discovers that Turner has been arrested on espionage charges and is now imprisoned.  She was investigating two suspicious soldier’s deaths in Afghanistan. 

Of course, he smells a rat and tries to investigate what happened to Turner.  He starts poking around and hooks an unwanted warning from a shady lawyer to stay away. The lawyer produces an incentive in a new-found paternity suit and shows Reacher a picture of his supposed 15-year-old daughter, Samantha Dayton.  Reacher takes the picture of the girl.  

The lawyer is summarily killed by an assassin known only as “the hunter,” and frames Reacher for the murder.  Now fully committed into finding out what is going on, Reacher breaks into and out of a maximum security prison with Major Turner.  (Who knew it could be so easy to escape from a max-secure prison?)  Together, they try to evade the military police and the “hunter” whom is trying to kill her.   

Meanwhile, Reacher quickly finds possible offspring and tails her.  Of course, she is a worldly and street-wise fifteen year old that lives with foster parents (her mother is a recovering addict).  It seems like lately nearly every movie…we want all our 15 year-old girls to be very Katniss Everdeen-ish.   (More of this later)** 

One of the best parts of this movie is Samantha, played by Danika Yarosh.  Keep watching this young lady, as I predict she will do great things in future movies.  Her “Samantha” is plucky and inventive, sometimes she seems more aware of the situations than the adults in this movie. 

Unfortunately, the “Hunter” is able to put 2 and 2 together to realize that Samantha is Reacher’s daughter…  the same guy that keeps thwarting his efforts to get rid of Major Turner.  Vowing to “getting to” Reacher and killing Turner, he is now searching for “the girl.”  (Samantha)

Now, the three of them (Reacher, Turner and Samantha) are simultaneously running from the “police” (oddly just the Military police), the assassin and also trying to figure out why two of Major Turner’s soldiers were murdered in cold blood.  Eventually, they end up in a chase on the streets of New Orleans in which Turner kicks some ass (Actress Cobie Smulders shreds her “How I met your mother” TV image… and it was reported she did all her own stunts….wow!), and eventually the Hunter and Reacher reach a standoff as the assassin holds Samantha in harm’s way….

Of course, the girl is rescued, the assassin meets his end and Reacher is helped from a rooftop from Samantha and Turner. 

(Spoiler alert):  Major Susan Turner is restored to her job, the bad guys arrested for dealing “pure opium” and Reacher discovers that Samantha is not his daughter.  Turner and Reacher say a nice “maybe I’ll see you later” end.  Though she would like to stay connected to Reacher as he continues on his lonesome ways….  Maybe he found a daughter anyway…in a way….  A satisfying end. 

It’s a good movie.  Like I said, any movie watching Tom Cruise is going to be good.  Of course.  The guy is in great shape.  Cobie Smulders was utilitarian as she needed to be, a real modern woman, but certainly not a romance interest.  And again Danika Yarosh brought much light to an otherwise typical and formulated spy story.  Just watch any episode of NCIS LA for nearly the same material. 

My opinion:  If it’s a rainy Saturday night and you’re single and lonely….or….Sunday and you have nothing really better to do… and you have a ten-spot burning in your pocket… go see this movie at the theater.  It’s certainly better than many of the other movies offered this week.  However, maybe just wait until the rental comes out… and spend a little less money and enjoy it just as much. 

From a formulaic writer; the original story is from a novel…number 13 from Lee Child; “Never go Back,” in the Jack Reacher series.  Sigh.  I don’t know why modern writers get the idea they have to strangle a good idea until it pukes blood.  Can you imagine Casablanca IV: The invasion?   Ugh! 

*Other notes:  The movie was to begin at 7:25…  but the previews lasted nearly 16 minutes past this!  Amazing!  I noted 3 years ago, the previews lasted 12 minutes… now, it’s pumped up to 16 minutes.  What’s the point in having a starting time at all?

**Children in peril in movies:  A troubling trend I see in modern movies is children being put in “harm’s way” for the sake of the story.  Here (In Reacher) we have a fifteen-year-old girl both psychologically and physically threatened in the worst possible terms.  Yes, I know it’s just a movie…. But… maybe, just maybe we need to admit to ourselves it’s just one more line crossed that leaves us, call it less humane.  I think kids, regardless of how plucky and resourceful they are having enough on their hands just growing up… why must we make them the center of our evil universe? 

I noticed this front and center in The Hunger Games.  The very idea that we get to see a very young girl bleed out slowly in front of our eyes really sickened me.  Of course, I know that is at the heart of the story…but, still. 

It’s all due to what I call the white hat/black hat syndrome, or more closely: the “good gulf” which is the distance necessary between the good guy and the bad guy to make a convincing narrative drama.  In old westerns, the good guys always wore white hats, the bad guys, black.  Good guys…always good. Bad guys, always BAD. 

Of course, the rise of the anti-hero approximated with our real-life experiences that most people are not either “all good” nor “all bad.”  As we have become a more jaded and ragged society, the more we realize the “good guy” with the gleaming white teeth and the heart of gold is more camp than believable.  The anti-hero is not new… I really believe Bogart (and a few others) probably started it, in several of his movie portrayals. 

However it began, it has become commonplace now.  A fact most clearly reflected in our Superman movies.  No one would except the besotted Superman of the George Reeves TV shows as “silly.”  Even the “gee willikers” platitudes of the mighty Christopher Reeves seems flat and dated.  Now we seem to like our Superman not so super…in many ways as jaded and awful as we feel. 

Of course, the problem with having the anti-hero as…well, the hero; you have to have the negative to that for the equation.  In the parlance of the movie, The Matrix: “Who is he?  He is your opposite, your negative.  The equation trying to balance itself out.”

Since you’ve got a negative already… you have to get downright evil to be the Bad part of the equation.  That leaves….The Devil, of course as the ultimate evil.  But this is a spy drama.  Megalomaniacs, of course are good…but also overdone.  Man vs. Machine, of course.  Nope.

That leaves man vs. man, in which the conflict becomes personal.  And it has to be deeply personal.  Not just threating to kill the man is enough, it has to be his whole family.  Visa vi, what is worse than that?  A daughter or a son.  Personal revenge taken out on a daughter is one of the most distasteful, evil and vile things one man can do to another.  Therefore, that’s how a movie can balance the negative “good guy” with a much more negative “bad guy.” 

The result?  Movies that now feature (possible) slaughter of children for our entertainment.  And I do not like that, one bit. 

I hope Hollywood writers find more appropriate ways of showing the conflict between good and evil in storytelling.  But then again, maybe we really have run entirely out of ideas.  

Movie Critiques:  Greetings!  I invite all movie lovers to enjoy any of the movies that I review here…. And participate in discussions of such.  Remember, everything regarding “art,” be it movies, painting, sculptures, or even certain Architecture, is in the eye of the beholder.  So, what might be inspiring to me, could be insipid to you. 

All I ask….no, actually, I demand, that you behave yourselves.  If you cannot do just that little thing, then I shall be forced to evict you from the island forever.  This is not freedom of the press… these are my opinions.  If you don’t like them… that’s cool.  Start your own page. 

I plan on covering every kind of movie here; in theaters, in the 5 dollar bin, on cable, on cable, television, old black and white movies, concerts, documentaries, and even…yes, even…musicals!  (laughing).  About the only thing I probably will not cover here will be silent movies. 

There will also be some ruminations about interesting books or novels I’ve read that intersect with these movies.  For example:  is the book better than the movie?  And if so, why? 

In any case, I hope you enjoy my page… and take the time to enjoy some of these movies.  Though Shakespeare has told nearly every human interest story there is… sometimes, it’s good to be surprised by a movie that moves you.  Of course, there is a difference between “moving” you and using your emotions to sell a product.  We’ll try and weed out the chaff from the incredible, and the durable from the passable.  Here we go!