Story of movie Jack Reacher Film :
Jack Reacher (formerly called One Shot, or alternatively known as Jack Reacher: One Shot) 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 concluded in January 2012. It was filmed entirely on location in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It received mostly positive reviews and performed well at the box office.
| Jack Reacher | |
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Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Christopher McQuarrie |
| Produced by |
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| Screenplay by | Christopher McQuarrie |
| Based on | One Shot by Lee Child |
| Starring |
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| Music by | Joe Kraemer |
| Cinematography | Caleb Deschanel |
| Edited by | Kevin Stitt |
Production company |
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| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 130 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $60 million |
| Box office | $218.3 million |
The film was released in North America on December 21. 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 signature car chase sequence. Cruise reprised his role in the sequel, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, based on the 2013 novel Never Go Back, which was released in October 2016.
Screenplay
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a man drives a van into a parking garage across the Allegheny River from PNC Park and, after dropping a quarter into the meter, readies a sniper rifle. He takes aim and kills five people on the river's North Shore Trail from long range before fleeing in the van.
The police soon arrive at the scene of the murder, headed by Detective Emerson (David Oyelowo), and discover a shell casing as well as the quarter used to pay for parking. A fingerprint taken from the coin points to James Barr (Joseph Sikora), a former U.S. Army sniper. When the police raid his house, they find the van, equipment for reloading rifle cartridges, the rifle in question, and Barr asleep in his bed.
During an interrogation by Emerson and the District Attorney, Alex Rodin (Richard Jenkins), Barr is offered a choice between life in prison in exchange for a full confession or guaranteed death row, as Rodin has never lost a conviction. Thinking Barr is going to confess when he takes the notepad, they are bewildered when he instead writes "Get Jack Reacher". Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) is a drifter and former U.S. Army Military Police Corps officer. He arrives in Pittsburgh after seeing a news report about Barr and the shooting. Emerson and Rodin deny Reacher's request to view the evidence but agree to let him see Barr, who was brutally attacked by fellow inmates while in police custody and is now in a coma. Reacher meets Barr's defense attorney, counselor Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike), the District Attorney's daughter, who has been saddled with the apparently hopeless task of saving Barr from the death penalty.
Helen says she can arrange for Reacher to see the evidence if he will become her lead investigator. Reacher retorts that he is not interested in clearing Barr. He reveals that Barr had gone on a killing spree during his tour in Iraq but was not prosecuted because, unbeknownst to Barr, his victims were under investigation for numerous rapes and the U.S. Army wanted them forgotten. Reacher vowed that if Barr tried anything like this again, he would take him down.
Reacher agrees to investigate if Helen visits the victims' families to learn about the people murdered that day. Reacher goes to the crime scene and finds inconsistencies about this location, thinking that a trained shooter would have done the killings from the cover of the van on the nearby Fort Duquesne Bridge. After Helen reports her findings about the victims to Reacher, he suggests that the owner of a local construction company was the intended victim, while the other victims served as a cover-up.
After an apparently spurious bar fight, Reacher realizes that someone is attempting to strong-arm him into dropping his investigation. Reacher is later framed for the murder of the young woman (Alexia Fast) who was paid to instigate the bar-room brawl, but this only motivates him further. Reacher eventually follows up a lead at a shooting range in the neighboring state of Ohio, owned by former U.S. Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Martin Cash (Robert Duvall), who will talk only if Reacher will demonstrate his U.S. Army sniping skills.
The real perpetrators are gang members masquerading as legitimate businessmen. The gang's elderly leader (Werner Herzog) spent much of his life in a Soviet Gulag and is known only as the Zec (prisoner). The gang kidnaps Helen with the aid of Detective Emerson and holds her hostage at a quarry. After he steals Helen's Mercedes-Benz, Reacher outwits the mob guards, killing them with Cash's help, before confronting the Zec about the conspiracy. Zec points out that Reacher has killed most of the witnesses against him and doubts that he would be convicted. Reacher shoots the Zec in the head on the spot.
Reacher and Cash flee the scene with confidence that Helen will clear Reacher's name. When Barr awakens from his coma, he tells Helen that he has no recent memory but believes that he must be guilty of the shootings. Barr's mental reconstruction of how he would have committed the shootings confirms that Reacher's theory was correct from the beginning. Still unaware of all these developments, Barr is willing to confess and accept his punishment, fearing that Reacher will mete out justice if the law does not.
- Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher
- Rosamund Pike as Helen Rodin
- Richard Jenkins as Alex Rodin
- Werner Herzog as Zec Chelovek
- David Oyelowo as Emerson
- Jai Courtney as Charlie
- Joseph Sikora as James Barr
- Robert Duvall as Martin Cash
- Susan Angelo as Oline Archer
- Vladimir Sizov as Vlad
- Michael Raymond-James as Linsky
- Alexia Fast as Sandy
- Josh Helman as Jeb Oliver
- James Martin Kelly as Rob Farrior
- Nicole Forester as Nancy Holt
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.
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 not matching the description of Reacher in the novels. 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."
Following the casting of Cruise, Rosamund Pike was cast as the female lead. Other actresses who were in the running for the role included Hayley Atwell and Alexa Davalos. By September 2011, the main cast was locked in with the hiring of David Oyelowo, Richard Jenkins, Jai Courtney, and Robert Duvall. Werner Herzog, primarily known for his directorial work, rounded out the cast in October 2011 when he signed on to play the film's chief villain.
In April 2017, Dwayne Johnson revealed that he was in the running to play Jack Reacher before Cruise was hired.
Filming
Production on the film began in October 2011. 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 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."
Music
The film's musical score was composed by Joe Kraemer, who previously scored director McQuarrie's The Way of the Gun (2000). Kraemer was announced as the composer for the film in July 2012, having already started work on it. After spending eight weeks working with McQuarrie on materials to present to producers, Kraemer's hiring was approved and he directly began working on the film's opening eight minutes. "I have a number of tricks that I use to spark the creative process," said Kraemer on his scoring process after having seen the film. "Sometimes I'll use my mathematical understanding of music to devise a theme (such as the open fifths of Reacher's theme), sometimes I'll have an orchestral color in mind (i.e. the music for THE ZEC). The actual composing process probably resembles Max Steiner more than anyone else I know of. I start at the first frame of the movie and work my through to the end, chronologically, in order."
The film is noted for its balance between music and silence, with music primarily absent or reserved during a majority of the film's action sequences. Discussing his approach to this balance, Kraemer described, "Music can make such an impact when it enters a scene, and obviously the only way to do that is to have silence beforehand. I also generally like to have long tails on my cues so that they sort of fade away rather than ending abruptly. In this way, I try to weave music in and out very carefully so that the audience is as unaware as possible of the entrances and exits. I often cite Patton as a prime example of great spotting – a three and half hour biopic with, what, twenty-eight minutes of score? That's unheard of today. But it worked!"
The score was performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony and recorded at the Sony Scoring Stage in Culver City, California. A soundtrack album for the film was released on December 18, 2012 by La-La Land Records.
- Track listing
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