35: Jack Reacher

This week, Tom Cruise explores the road not taken with Christopher McQuarrie’s 2012 action-thriller Jack Reacher. Is Cruise a bad match for Lee Child’s drifter hero? How can a car chase be so boring? What’s harder: walking, or talking?

Unanswered Questions:

  • What is the political or philosophical connection between Reacher and the Zek?
  • How does Lee Child’s British perspective on Americanism manifest itself in the text?
  • How indebted is the script to the original novel?

Further reading:

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Join us next week for the first of Cruise’s back-to-back high-concept sci-fi adventures, Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion.


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