tom cruise movie about sniper

The Ending Of Jack Reacher Explained

In the 2012 film "Jack Reacher," a horrible crime is committed in Pittsburgh: five people are coldly executed by a sniper. The case seems open and shut when the police discover a man named James Barr (Joseph Sikora), a former U.S. Army sniper with damning evidence in his home and his van. The authorities make a simple offer to Barr: a full confession and life in prison, or a guaranteed death sentence in court. Barr doesn't say a word, but takes a pen and a notepad and writes three words: "Get Jack Reacher."

Reacher ( Tom Cruise ) arrives in Pittsburgh after hearing of Barr's arrest for the murder. Reacher is a wandering drifter and former Army police officer who knows full well what Barr is capable of, but doubts he committed the actual crime. Joining forces with Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike), Barr's defense attorney, the two realize that the killing spree is actually part of a far more insidious plot.

The full confession of an innocent man

In "Jack Reacher's" final scene, Barr had been attacked in prison and left in a coma, one he awakens from with no memory. However, he believes that he must be guilty of the shootings. While innocent of the crime he was framed for, he talks about how he would have committed the crime exactly as Reacher himself described it during his investigation. Barr then demands to face his punishment. He is eager to own up to this crime because of his previous encounter with Reacher years before, where he had gone on a killing spree during his tour in Iraq but wasn't prosecuted for the crime because his victims were suspected of multiple instances of sexual assault.

As Barr confesses, he breaks down in tears, not of remorse or regret for his crimes, but for the fact that Reacher knows where he is, and if he gets away with this, he will find him and kill him. After all, Reacher doesn't care about the law — he only cares about what's right. As the film ends, we see a man verbally and physically threatening his wife on a bus, and Reacher quietly rises from his seat and starts moving toward him, further reinforcing his personal principles.

The deconstruction of the Action Hero

In "Jack Reacher," we see a take on the implacable, unstoppable action hero that's quite different from other examples within the genre. Cruise's Reacher isn't quick with quips like John McClane or a nearly indestructible powerhouse like Dom Toretto , but a quiet and determined operator who will absolutely, positively kill you dead if you're outside of his definition of right or wrong. The world of "Jack Reacher" isn't one where a person can fly into the windshield of a speeding car and walk it off: the violence is quick, lean, and brutal. Jack Reacher isn't a maverick cop or a charming rogue, but a trained killer who is very, very good at administering pain and executing his opponents quickly and efficiently.

The film illustrates that a man like Reacher, someone so close to what we conceive of as the archetypal action hero, one operating by his own code and acting as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, would be a terrifying figure even if he's ostensibly the "good guy."

Rent or buy
Categories Categories
Getting Started

Jack Reacher

Cast and Crew

Other formats

32989 global ratings

How are ratings calculated? Toggle Expand Toggle Expand

Amazon Newsletter
About Amazon
Accessibility
Sustainability
Press Center
Investor Relations
Amazon Devices
Amazon Science
Sell on Amazon
Sell apps on Amazon
Supply to Amazon
Protect & Build Your Brand
Become an Affiliate
Become a Delivery Driver
Start a Package Delivery Business
Advertise Your Products
Self-Publish with Us
Become an Amazon Hub Partner
› See More Ways to Make Money
Amazon Visa
Amazon Store Card
Amazon Secured Card
Amazon Business Card
Shop with Points
Credit Card Marketplace
Reload Your Balance
Amazon Currency Converter
Your Account
Your Orders
Shipping Rates & Policies
Amazon Prime
Returns & Replacements
Manage Your Content and Devices
Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
Conditions of Use
Privacy Notice
Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
Your Ads Privacy Choices

Supported by

Movie Review

Might Makes Him Mr. Right

Share full article

By A.O. Scott

Dec. 20, 2012

“Who are you, Mister?” a young woman asks Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise), and it’s a question that recurs, not always quite so politely, throughout the movie that bears Reacher’s name. He may be an elusive individual with a sketchy background — ex-military, no fixed address, a single shirt to his name — but as an archetype he is easy enough to recognize. He is a cousin of Shane and Caine (from the old “Kung Fu” television series) and Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name: a paladin without portfolio who travels from town to town, dispensing righteous violence and hard-boiled aphorisms.

“It’s just what guys like me do,” Reacher says wearily at one point, though he could say it at just about any point.

Guys like him are mythical creatures, fantasy figures who dispense rough justice when civic institutions fail. Part comic-book superhero, part Old West vigilante and wholly preposterous, Reacher is far less enigmatic than he or anyone else in the movie thinks he is. And also less interesting.

Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie and adapted from “One Shot,” the ninth in Lee Child’s series of macho best sellers, “Jack Reacher” brings its hero to Pittsburgh, where a sniper has just shot down five innocent people, including a nanny accompanying a small child, in broad daylight. The suspected shooter (Joseph Sikora) lies in a coma — after scrawling “Get Jack Reacher” on a pad in lieu of a confession — with a seemingly airtight case against him. Shell casings, fingerprints at the scene, security-camera video, all the usual stuff that disciplined television crime-show viewers will recognize as solid circumstantial evidence.

But the man’s lawyer, Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike), hires Reacher anyway, possibly because she thinks he might keep her client off death row, and possibly because she, like every other woman in (and presumably beyond) the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is made weak in the knees by Reacher’s off-the-charts sexual magnetism.

Helen also has some daddy issues, mainly that her daddy (Richard Jenkins) is the district attorney prosecuting the presumed killer. He and the lead detective on the case (David Oyelowo) are obviously too sure of themselves to be trusted, and even before we meet a character known as the Zec (Werner Herzog, whose casting raises a brief film-geek frisson ) we know that the poor fellow in the coma is a patsy. We also know, just because of the kind of guy Jack Reacher is, that the body count is sure to rise.

And so “Jack Reacher” lumbers through a series of beatings, shootings and bludgeonings on its way to a climactic, not terribly surprising showdown. There is a pretty good car chase and a lot of very bad dialogue. Mr. McQuarrie, on his second outing as a director (his screenplays include “The Usual Suspects” and “Valkyrie”), seems more suited to action scenes than to the ostensibly simpler task of filming people talking. Nearly every conversation is stilted and lame, laden with the kind of repartee that might strike you as witty if you had no sense of humor.

The self-confident, supercompetent Reacher is a character Mr. Cruise could play in his sleep, which is pretty much what he does. Ms. Pike seems a bit more agitated, perhaps because she is too refined an actress for the kind of pulpy sincerity the movie requires. She tries very hard to make sense of Helen’s emotions and motives, which is a hopeless task, since the character is an inexplicable collage of empathy, ambition and neediness, on hand to awaken Reacher’s chivalrous impulses and to quiver with confused desire whenever he is in the room.

Apart from the car chase, the only real fun in “Jack Reacher” comes from Mr. Herzog and Robert Duvall, called in near the end for some marvelously gratuitous scenery chewing as a gruff former Marine. They enliven the movie’s atmosphere of weary brutality for a few moments, but they also call attention to the dullness of their dramatic surroundings.

“Jack Reacher” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Violence and some swearing.

Watch A. O. Scott on “The Sweet Spot” with David Carr, on culture and criticism, at nytimes.com.

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

“Elvis” and “Dune” established Austin Butler as a chameleonic movie star. Now, with “The Bikeriders,” something closer to the real Butler is being revealed .

Erin Moriarty, the highest-billed actress in the superhero satire “The Boys,” discussed her role in an age of online bullying and token feminism .

How does democracy die? “The Boys” and other TV series imagine fascism coming to America , whether wrapped in the flag or in a superhero’s tights.

In his first season leading “Doctor Who,” Ncuti Gatwa has brought charisma, emotion and even more camp to the long-running sci-fi show.

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime and Hulu to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Upcoming Movies and TV shows
Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

What's the Tomatometer®?
Login/signup

Movies in theaters

Opening this week
Top box office
Coming soon to theaters
Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

Fandango at Home
Netflix streaming
Prime Video
Most popular streaming movies
What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

Inside Out 2 Link to Inside Out 2
The Bikeriders Link to The Bikeriders
Fancy Dance Link to Fancy Dance

New TV Tonight

House of the Dragon: Season 2
Hotel Cocaine: Season 1
Tony Awards: Season 77
Megamind Rules!: Season 1
Shoresy: Season 3
Grantchester: Season 9
Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown: Season 1
Hart to Heart: Season 4
Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini: Season 1
Chopper Cops: Season 1

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation

Where to watch.

Watch Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation with a subscription on Prime Video, Paramount+, rent on Fandango at Home, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Apple TV.

What to Know

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation continues the franchise's thrilling resurgence -- and proves that Tom Cruise remains an action star without equal.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Christopher McQuarrie

Jeremy Renner

William Brandt

Rebecca Ferguson

Ving Rhames

Luther Stickell

Movie Clips

Jack Reacher (2012)

Full cast & crew.

Directed by

Writing credits ( wga ) , cast (in credits order) verified as complete , produced by , music by , cinematography by , editing by , casting by , production design by , art direction by , set decoration by , costume design by , makeup department , production management , second unit director or assistant director , art department , sound department , special effects by , visual effects by , stunts , camera and electrical department , animation department , casting department , costume and wardrobe department , editorial department , location management , music department , script and continuity department , transportation department , additional crew , thanks .

Release Dates | Official Sites | Company Credits | Filming & Production | Technical Specs

Contribute to This Page

Full Cast and Crew
Release Dates
Official Sites
Company Credits
Filming & Production
Technical Specs
Plot Summary
Plot Keywords
Parents Guide

Did You Know?

Crazy Credits
Alternate Versions
Connections
Soundtracks

Photo & Video

Photo Gallery
Trailers and Videos
User Reviews
User Ratings
External Reviews
Metacritic Reviews

Scope Out The Best Sniper Movies Ever Made

You don't need a spotter to find good movies about snipers and sharpshooters because we've ranked them from best to worst using votes from Rankers like you. It makes sense that films about marksmen hitting targets from a distance are great subject matter for thrillers like Phone Booth and Grand Piano . There are also a few war drama films on the list like American Sniper, Enemy at the Gates, and Battle for Sevastopol. But if straight action is what you're looking for, be sure to check out Tom Berenger in the Sniper franchise or Mark Wahlberg in Shooter. No matter what you choose to watch, you'll either know what it's like to see a target through a scope or find out what it feels like to be in the crosshairs. With so many good sniper movies, it will be hard to determine the top ten best sniper movies, not to mention which one belongs in the number one spot.

Vote up your favorite films about marksmen and markswomen so other fans will know what to watch next. Also, don't hesitate to vote down the sniper movies you wish you hadn't seen to keep them from going to the top of the list. Lastly, look for the Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Paramount+, and Apple TV+ buttons below each film to stream them whenever you want.

Enemy at the Gates

Enemy at the Gates is a movie about one of history's most legendary snipers, Vassili Zaitsev. The film follows him as he works tirelessly to defend Stalingrad from Nazi forces during World War II. It does a remarkable job showing how his skill and accuracy with a rifle were key to the battle, but more importantly, it emphasizes the human cost of war in a powerful way. Enemy at the Gates is an excellent historical drama with suspenseful action sequences.

# 11 of 262 on The 200+ Best War Movies Of All Time
# 15 of 113 on The Best Movies Of 2001
# 11 of 12 on The 12 Most Inaccurate War Movies Ever Made

American Sniper

American Sniper is a powerful movie about a Navy SEAL sniper, Chris Kyle. The film follows his story from enlisting in the military to being deployed for four tours and eventually returning home with PTSD. It's an honest portrayal of what war does to soldiers, as well as their families, and shows just how difficult it is for them to readjust back into civilian life.

Dig Deeper... 29 Things Most People Don't Know About 'American Sniper'
And Deeper... Historical Inaccuracies In ‘American Sniper’
# 16 of 262 on The 200+ Best War Movies Of All Time

Shooter is an action-packed movie about a former military sniper, Bob Lee Swagger. It tells the story of how he is framed for murder and must fight to clear his name. The film does an excellent job of showing the skill and expertise required to be a good marksman, as well as highlighting the moral dilemma faced by soldiers who have to make life-or-death decisions in their line of work.

# 92 of 191 on The Best Movies For Men
# 39 of 139 on The Best Movies Of 2007
# 35 of 65 on The Most Patriotic Movies Of All Time

Sniper , released in 1993 and starring Tom Berenger and Billy Zane, is a great movie about the life of a sniper. The film follows the story of Thomas Beckett (Berenger) as he attempts to complete one final mission before retiring from his career as an expert marksman. It's a gripping tale that will keep viewers on the edge of their seats until its thrilling conclusion. With realistic battle scenes and excellent performances by both lead actors, Sniper is sure to please fans who are looking for an entertaining movie about snipers.

# 39 of 157 on The Best TriStar Pictures Movies List
# 56 of 77 on The 75+ Best Black Ops Films
# 56 of 83 on The 80+ Best Army Movies Of All Time

Saving Private Ryan

Captain John Miller is tasked with retrieving Private James Ryan from behind enemy lines during WW II. This film makes the list because of Barry Pepper as Private Daniel Jackson, a gifted marksman who participates in one of the most memorable scenes involving snipers ever in a war film.

Dig Deeper... This Virginia Town’s Massive Single-Day Loss During WWII Inspired 'Saving Private Ryan'
# 8 of 50 on The Biggest Movies Of The '90s, Ranked
# 1 of 262 on The 200+ Best War Movies Of All Time

# 36 of 95 on The 100+ Best Movies Of 1997
# 50 of 99 on The Best 1990s Action Movies
# 71 of 107 on The Best Movies About A Cat And Mouse Game

Dirty Harry

Dirty Harry is an iconic movie from 1971 starring Clint Eastwood. It follows a San Francisco detective, Dirty Harry Callahan, who uses his sharp wit and deadly accuracy with a .44 Magnum to take down criminals in the city. He must track down a vicious sniper before a kidnapped girl pays the ultimate price, but due to Harry's overzealousness, the sniper is back on the street and takes a school bus hostage. It's up to Dirty Harry to stop him for good this time.

# 15 of 191 on The Best Movies For Men
# 422 of 769 on The Most Rewatchable Movies
# 53 of 149 on Movies That Should Never Be Remade

Sniper: The White Raven

Battle for Sevastopol

The Battle for Sevastopol is a 2015 Russian war film based on the real-life story of Ukrainian sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko. The movie follows Pavlichenko's journey as she fights to defend her homeland and become one of the deadliest snipers in history. From intense action sequences to psychological drama, this movie will keep you on your toes.

Jack Reacher

The action thriller movie Jack Reacher , starring Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike, is a good action-mystery movie about a sniper. The film follows former military police officer Jack Reacher as he investigates an assassin who shot five random victims in Pittsburgh. With gripping suspense and intense fight scenes , this movie keeps you on your toes as you follow Jack's journey to uncover the truth behind the shootings.

Dig Deeper... All the Jack Reacher Books, Ranked Best to Worst
# 677 of 769 on The Most Rewatchable Movies
# 19 of 44 on The 40+ Best Tom Cruise Movies, Ranked By Fans

Phone Booth

Phone Booth is a suspenseful movie about a sniper who traps an unsuspecting man in a phone booth. The movie follows the man as he desperately tries to escape from his captor while also trying to save himself and innocent bystanders. It stars Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Katie Holmes, and Forest Whitaker. This tense thriller has great performances all around and keeps viewers glued to the screen until the very end. It is an excellent example of a good movie involving a sniper that leaves viewers with plenty of questions and excitement.

# 80 of 252 on The 200+ Best Psychological Thrillers Of All Time
# 23 of 152 on The Best Movies of 2002
# 34 of 152 on The Best Movies Of 2003, Ranked

The Wall is an intense and captivating movie about a sniper, set in the backdrop of a war-torn Middle East. The film follows two soldiers who are trying to survive after one of them is shot by an unseen enemy sniper. While under constant threat, they must use their wits and courage in order to make it out alive. It's an incredibly thrilling experience that will keep you on edge throughout its entirety.

Sniper: Reloaded

Sniper: Reloaded is a good movie about a sniper, released in 2011. It follows the story of a sniper, Brandon Beckett, who is tasked with preventing rebel forces from overthrowing the government. The action sequences are intense and dramatic, making them exciting to watch. The soundtrack also adds to the overall effect by adding suspenseful music at key moments throughout the film. Sniper: Reloaded is definitely worth watching for anyone interested in snipers or military-style movies.

The American

# 433 of 675 on The Best Movies Roger Ebert Gave Four Stars
# 10 of 14 on Quiet Action Movies That Don't Need A Ton Of Explosions To Keep You Gripped
# 32 of 34 on Great Movies About Very Dark Heroes

Assassins is a movie about a skilled sniper, portraying the story of his life and all he has gone through to become an expert in his craft. It depicts how someone who obeys orders can question what is right and wrong. The film uses stunning cinematography to capture the tension between the protagonist’s moral choices and his devotion to duty, making it an enthralling watch for any viewer.

# 49 of 54 on The Most Unrealistic Action Films
# 39 of 75 on The 70+ Best Romance Action Movies, Ranked
# 46 of 100 on The 80+ Best R-Rated Action And Thriller Movies

Sniper 2 is a thrilling movie about a sniper, Thomas Beckett. It has plenty of thrilling moments and intense action sequences that will keep you on the edge of your seat. The story follows Beckett and his spotter as they are sent to assassinate a general responsible for ethnic cleansing attacks.

Sniper: Assassin's End

Jarhead is a gripping war drama that follows the story of sniper Anthony Swofford, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. The movie does an excellent job of delving into the psychological effects of being in combat and conveying how difficult it can be to make decisions in such high-stakes situations. It also realistically captures what life is like for those serving in the military, from small moments between comrades to big battles on foreign soil. All in all, Jarhead provides viewers with a unique look at war through its thrilling action scenes as well as its thought-provoking narrative.

# 2 of 10 on The Best Movies About the Gulf War
# 160 of 262 on The 200+ Best War Movies Of All Time
# 42 of 143 on The Best Movies of 2005

The Sniper (2009) is an intense, action-packed movie about the top snipers in the Hong Kong Police Force. The majority of the drama is derived from relationships on the elite Special Duties Unit Sniper Team. Get ready for combating egos and wild cards in this action thriller.

Silent Trigger

Silent Trigger is an action-packed movie about a soon-to-be-retired sniper, Waxman. Not only does Silent Trigger provide suspenseful entertainment but it also paints a picture of the emotional toll being a sniper can take on someone. It gives us insight into what soldiers go through in high-stakes situations and provides viewers with thought-provoking reflections on morality and justice.

The Virtuoso

The Virtuoso is an action-packed and thrilling movie about a professional sniper who must complete a difficult mission in return for his freedom. It stars the talented Anthony Hopkins, and his performance will leave you captivated from start to finish. With intense action sequences, unexpected twists, and turns, this movie will have you on the edge of your seat throughout its entirety.

Downrange is a 2018 suspenseful thriller about six college students who are stranded on the side of the road after their car tire gets punctured. What starts off as an innocent roadside stop quickly turns into a nightmare when they realize that they have become targets for a mysterious sniper. This movie does a good job of painting the picture of what it's like to be in the shoes of someone being hunted by a trained marksman.

Two-Minute Warning

Two-Minute Warning is a 1976 thriller directed by Larry Peerce that follows the story of a sniper who takes hostages at a crowded football stadium. It's an intense, suspenseful movie with plenty of twists and turns. All in all, Two-Minute Warning is an excellent film about a sniper that should be seen by anyone interested in thrillers or crime dramas.

Sniper 3 is a great movie about the life of an expert military sniper. Although it is action-packed, there are also many intense emotional moments that show us how tough and stressful being a sniper can be. It follows the story of Major Beckett as he battles both his enemies abroad and personal demons at home.

D.C. Sniper: 23 Days of Fear

D.C. Sniper: 23 Days of Fear is a gripping movie that follows the real-life story of two men responsible for a serial killing spree in 2002, which left ten people dead and three others injured throughout the Washington D.C. area over three weeks. The film does an excellent job of highlighting the fear and tension felt by residents as they lived in constant worry of becoming victims to these snipers during this time while delving into the complex psychological profiles of both shooters.

The Ravine is a gripping war drama about a special ops sniper on the front lines of battle. It follows his journey as he works to complete his mission and defend his country from the enemy forces. Despite being a movie about warfare, it has many aspects that people can relate to in their own lives, making it an emotionally engaging film with great performances from its cast. The beautiful visuals and intense action sequences make this movie engrossing to watch.

Assassination Games

Assassination Games is a great movie about a sniper and his unique skills. It follows the story of two assassins, each with their own motivations but both of them seeking revenge on the same target. The sniper's character arc is especially interesting as he begins to question why he does what he does and how far will he take it in order to get his revenge. The movie has some intense action sequences that really show off the power of a skilled shooter.

# 160 of 472 on The Best Black Movies Ever Made, Ranked
# 12 of 48 on Great Movies About Furious Women Out for Revenge
# 10 of 52 on The Most Exciting Movies About Female Assassins

Sniper: Special Ops

Grand Piano

Grand Piano is a thrilling and suspenseful movie about an acclaimed concert pianist who discovers that his life is in danger. The main character, Tom Selznick, must complete a piece of notoriously difficult music on a grand piano - or else he will be killed. This film captures all the tension and excitement of being under threat by a skilled marksman with its intense score, captivating cinematography, and strong performances from Elijah Wood and John Cusack.

Sniper: Ultimate Kill

# 191 of 191 on The Best Movies For Men
# 67 of 97 on The 90+ Best Manhunt Movies
# 65 of 120 on The 95+ Best R-Rated Action Movies

Elephant White

Fortress: Sniper's Eye

Liberty Stands Still

Tower is an American documentary that tells the story of the 1966 mass shooting at The University of Texas at Austin. It follows several survivors as they recount their experience, while also exploring how a single shooter can devastate a community in such a short amount of time. Tower is an excellent film about this devastating event and serves as a reminder to never take our safety for granted. With its mix of archival footage, interviews with survivors, and expert analysis from experts on gun violence, Tower is essential viewing for anyone interested in learning more about the impact these shootings have had on our society.

William Kelly's War

The Deadly Tower

Sniper's Ridge

Sharpshooter

Love and a Bullet

Love and a Bullet is an action-packed movie about a professional sniper named Tariq. He leads a double life as an assassin while also trying to find love in the midst of all the chaos. The film has excellent cinematography, great acting performances , and a thrilling plot that keeps viewers on their toes! In addition to being entertaining, Love and a Bullet serves as an example of how one can survive difficult circumstances with courage, resilience and integrity.

Also known as Die Katze , this sniper film will keep you entertained with its constant plot twists, as not everything is as it seems. A classic German action flick from the ‘80s, you won’t want to miss this one, especially if you are into bank heist movies as well as movies about snipers.

D.C. Sniper

Straight Shooter

Entertainment
Watchworthy

Looking closer at some of the best, most realistic, most brutal depictions of war in the history of entertainment.

These Underrated Films Deserve One More Shot

Show Spoilers
Night Vision
Sticky Header
Highlight Links

Follow TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/JackReacher

Jack Reacher » Film

Edit locked.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jackreacher2012.jpg

Jack Reacher is a 2012 American action thriller film. It is an adaptation of Lee Child's Jack Reacher series, the 2005 novel One Shot more specifically.

A man with a sniper rifle goes to a parking garage overlooking the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh , and kills five people across the river in the park, seemingly at random. The police are quick to find evidence and the man, James Barr. When they have him in for questioning, he writes "Get Jack Reacher" on a notepad. Before they can contact Reacher, the man is brutally beaten by fellow inmates and rendered comatose.

Reacher ( Tom Cruise ) arrives and begins to examine the case, discovering the murders are not as cut-and-dry as they seem...

Jack Reacher contains examples of:

Actor Allusion : Toward Tom Cruise and his obligatory Once per Episode chase on foot in almost every single film he's starring in. Gunny: Well, you can always start running.
Actually Pretty Funny : When Reacher observes that "There are three things cops never do. They don't vote Democrat, they don't drive Cadillacs, and they never use personal vehicles" to prove Helen wrong, the latter looks over to the uniformed officer with them, who just shrugs and has an expression of "Yeah, basically."
Adaptational Heroism : Of a villainous variety. The worst thing that Jeb and Sandy do is try to have Reacher beat up. In the book, they're more deeply involved in The Zec's crimes, with Jeb killing Oline's husband and Sandy acting as a Honey Trap so Barr won't have an alibi for the murders.
All Girls Want Bad Boys : When Jack asks Sandy why an intelligent, attractive, and nice teenage girl like her would put up with losers like Jeb Oliver and his crew, she says: "It's what girls like me do." She even hits on Jack again, because she believes he's a bad boy or at least a strong man.
And Your Little Dog, Too! : When Helen tries to convince the Zec that having her (the District Attorney's daughter ) as a hostage is a pretty bad idea (as in using her for leverage for the DA to "forget" the case), the Zec's response is simply that he will do such horrible things to both her and the DA that the only option they will have is to forget .
Asshole Victim : Barr's first set of victims in Iraq were shot leaving something they called a "rape rally".
Awesomeness by Analysis : Jack sums up that this is the important result of military training, as opposed to strength, stamina, or fearlessness. It's also why Jack decides Barr didn't commit the murders; if he'd carried out the attacks according to said training, most if not all of the Orgy of Evidence that lead the police to him wouldn't have been found. (Training) makes people who aren't necessarily smart seem smart by beating some tactical awareness into them.
Prior to the fight outside the bar: Jeb: Hey, outside ! Jack: Pay your check first. Jeb: I'll pay later. Jack: You won't be able to.
And this quote which Jack gives via a phone: Jack: I mean to beat you to death, and drink your blood from a boot.
And this exchange with Gary: Gary: Well, I need to see something. Reacher: How about the inside of an ambulance?
Badass Driver : While Jack has been described as an average to poor driver in the novels, in the film, save for having crashed into a fire hydrant and overshot a turn, he's quite the driver (in which all the stunts were done by Tom Cruise ).
Bathroom Brawl : Jack gets attacked by two idiot Mooks with a crowbar and an aluminum baseball bat in a bathroom.
Battle in the Rain : The final battle takes place in the middle of the rain.
Big Bad : The Zec is the man behind the killings.
Bilingual Bonus : The name of the Big Bad 's company, Lebendauer, is just one S short of "Lebensdauer", which is German for "lifespan" or "lifetime". This ties nicely into said Big Bad 's rants about survival and lifelong prison sentences.
Blasting It Out of Their Hands : A lucky shot by Gunny manages to hit Charlie's sniper rifle, disabling it and forcing him to trade in for a standard rifle that will require him to fight Reacher on even terms.
Brand X : While Pittsburgh natives may recognize some landmarks and store locations, all the names have been changed, including the stadiums. This becomes a key point, where Reacher wonders which store the girl might be talking about when mentioning "the auto part store". He finds her quickly, which wouldn't happen in Real Life Pittsburgh, where most people would think of Advanced Auto Parts, of which there are over a dozen locations in the city and the surrounding area. Oh, and the name of "the auto parts store" turns out to be "Default Auto Parts".
Brick Joke : When Emerson tries to trip up Reacher by asking for the serial number of the rifle (the latter having not taken any notes of the evidence), he replies that the Detective should be more concerned with another detail, the date on the quarter. Much later, as Reacher's released from jail, he correctly recites the rifle's serial number, showing that yes, he did have it all along.
The Brute : Jeb, hired muscle meant to intimidate or kill Reacher, played with as he isn't a good fighter or very strong.
Call-Back : Reacher suspects Barr is being set up because the shots were made from a poor vantage point, especially when a significantly better one was close by. When Barr wakes up at the end of the movie, he can't remember what happened. Helen asks him to identify where he would've made the shots based on photographs. Barr selects Reacher's location, naming all the reasons Reacher said he would.
Canon Foreigner : All of the shooting victims besides Oline Archer (none were named in the book and she was the only woman killed in the book while here, only one of the victims was a man).
Chase Scene : Reacher engages in a car chase with Charlie, Emerson, and the police after Reacher finds he is framed for murdering Sandy .
Concealment Equals Cover : Averted. Several Mooks are shot or shot at through solid objects. Jack, meanwhile, is realistically (and thus, only temporarily) protected by several stacks of boxes filled with paper, which is a lot more material the bullets need to penetrate. When Reacher takes cover at the quarry, he either chooses large rocks or huge construction vehicles that are more than thick enough to absorb rifle fire.
Convenient Coma : Barr is attacked during transport to prison, rendering him comatose. This is to make sure he can't dispute the apparent facts of the case. The fact that he wasn't actually beaten to death (as likely intended) ends up being a plot point for the epilogue. Barr tearfully admits to having done the shooting despite not even remembering it, but when Helen asks him how , he tells her exactly how he would have done it (which matches with what Reacher believes Barr would have done if he was guilty) while being in complete contrast with how it was actually done with the intent of framing him.
Cold Sniper : Barr and the murderer are portrayed this way.
Combat Pragmatist : Reacher will do anything to win a fight. In hand-to-hand fighting, his opponent's testicles tend to be his primary target and he's very fond of eye gouges and headbutts. When he loses his knife in the finale, he simply takes out an opponent by smashing him over the head with a large rock.
The Conspiracy : Lebendauer Enterprises is a notably small-scale one with very limited reach and resources; a fly-by-night construction scam that happens to be led by ex-soldiers. And their goals are quite mundane; they're Only in It for the Money . As explained by Helen: Helen: Shell corporation in Georgia. That's the one next to Russia, not Florida. They work one city at a time, acquiring a local construction concern just ahead of major civic redevelopment. They build bridges no one needs, highways no one uses. They are like a cancer, a cell that won't stop growing. They moved 12 times in 15 years, Atlanta, Albuquerque, Austin, Oklahoma City, Sacramento, always amidst allegations of corruption, including millions of dollars in missing public funds and yet never an investigation, never even an inquiry!
Covered in Scars : When Reacher is introduced, several scars on his chest, back, and abdomen are shown quite prominently.
Complexity Addiction : The Zec and his men, explained away as "we make things messy now (by killing anything that is a threat to our operations and strong-arming anybody we leave alive) so it doesn't get messy later". Turns out that performing the massacre in the opening scene of the film would have made an investigator poke at it more thoroughly once some details are brought to light even before Reacher arrived if not for the fact that the chief investigator of it was on their take .
Composite Character : The filmmakers combine Helen with three other book characters (to mixed reactions): Barr's sister Rosemary (who first seeks defense for him and is the one to be kidnapped), local reporter Ann Yanni, and Franklin (a private investigator working for the defense), all of whom are in the loop with Reacher and contribute to his job for key areas of the book.
Creator Cameo : Lee Child appears as a desk sergeant in one scene.
Curb-Stomp Battle : Reacher goes up against five guys in a bar and beats the absolute shit out of them.
Dark and Troubled Past : The Zec. All we learn is he was a prisoner in a Siberian labour camp.
Deadpan Snarker : Reacher and Gunny.
Death by Adaptation : Emerson and the Zec are killed here while in the book they were arrested for their crimes.
Defensive Failure : Jack is attacked by a pair of bumbling criminals inside a narrow bathroom and hallway. After dispatching them, a third criminal points a gun to his head. Jack calmly turns around and informs the criminal that he should shoot now. Naturally, the criminal is quickly disarmed immediately after.
Demoted to Extra : In the book, Giver Limsky, who briefly follows Reacher, is the Zec's most trusted subordinate and a fellow former Gulag inmate. Here he's just a younger, incompetent Mook quickly subjected to You Have Failed Me .
Determinator : Jack Reacher, as well as the Big Bad . The latter has "whatever it takes to survive" as his unofficial motto.
Dirty Cop : Emerson. When Helen asks him why he's working for the Zec, all he gives as explanation is "You make it sound like they gave me a choice".
Distracted by the Sexy : Helen's efforts to discuss the case are sidetracked by Reacher walking around shirtless and showing off his muscles.
Don't Explain the Joke : Reacher ends up having to do this with Sandy. Reacher: I can't afford you. Sandy: I'm not a hooker. Reacher: Oh, then I really can't afford you. Sandy: Seriously, I work at the auto parts store. Reacher: What I mean is, the cheapest woman tends to be the one you pay for. Sandy: I am NOT a hooker! Reacher: [giving up] Well, a hooker would get the joke.
Doesn't Like Guns : Averted. Despite the plot of the movie being largely focused on the aftermath of a mass shooting and the author of the Jack Reacher novels Lee Child admittedly being anti-gun (with his views on guns being alluded to in his works and being unsurprising since he is from the UK, a nation with notoriously strict gun laws), there is surprisingly very little discussion among the characters in the film regarding gun politics in the United States. The sole exception being one scene where Jack Reacher goes to a shooting range in search of information regarding the suspect James Barr, the owner of the range Martin Cash initially didn't want to cooperate with Reacher out of fear that the other gun club members would see the disclosure of information regarding a fellow member as a violation of their constitutional rights. Beyond this scene none of the character's views on gun ownership are alluded to, besides Barr and Cash being heavily implied to be pro-gun.
The Dragon : Charlie is the Zec's main enforcer and the sniper in the opening.
The Drifter : Jack even self-identifies himself as one. He is Walking the Earth , with no personal possessions or real interest in anyone or anything, but he also has an almost compulsive tendency toward digging out the truth, regardless of how much work and beating it will take.
Easy Amnesia : After Barr's head injuries put him in a coma, there is a fear that the brain damage might cause him to lose the memory of the last few days. This would result in a lengthy legal battle to determine whether he is mentally competent to stand trial. When Barr wakes up, he indeed has amnesia and forgets that he is innocent and that he asked for Reacher.
Enemy Mine : Barr is invoking a form of this when he asks Emerson and Rodin to find Jack Reacher. Reacher despises Barr for his crime in Baghdad that he got away with and even promised to bring him down if he ever slipped up again. But Barr also knows Reacher's the only man who can see through the evidence and determine that Barr wasn't the shooter and figure out who framed him.
Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas : Some thugs that Reacher encounters reveal that Jeb wouldn't leave his mom behind.
Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep" : The Big Bad is a Serbian man only known as the Zec, Russian for "prisoner," as he spent a long time in a Russian prison. He says he forgot his real name during his time there.
The Evil Genius : Emmerson, the dirty cop working for the Zec.
Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap! : Helen is spelling out the conspiracy when she realises she might well be about to have a Have You Told Anyone Else? moment.
Face Palm : Helen after she mistakes Reacher's unintended innuendo for an invitation to stay the night in his bed.
The setup: Five people (one sitting on a park bench, four walking around) murdered by a sniper from across a river, the location verified by shell casings on the scene. A quarter recovered from a nearby parking meter has the murderer's thumbprint on it, and a sixth bullet recovered from the attack matches a precision rifle in his possession.
The payoff: It's an Orgy of Evidence , meant to cover for a set of Serial Killings, Specific Target . A sniper skilled enough to make five kills at that range would never choose to fire from across a river, with targets walking left and right and the sun in their eyes, unless there was no other choice; a preferred sniping position is where targets have to walk towards or away from the shooter, such as a nearby bridge where one could fire from inside a vehicle, which would also prevent shell casings from being lost, avoid security cameras and finger prints and guarantee a quick exit. The first target was sitting still, which would let the sniper determine windage and bullet drop, meaning the second target was the intended one. This is further hinted at by the second target being a pretty good distance from all of the others, meaning that the killer had to turn his aim a decent bit up and to the left, then back again; very inconvenient for what is supposed so be a series of random murders. Also, a sniper skilled enough to make five kills at that range and that position wouldn't have missed with the sixth; unless it wasn't a miss, but a deliberate shot into a target which ensured that an intact bullet would be recovered. Finally, the only sniper who would pay for parking would be one who wanted to leave evidence behind; and the only cop who would check the meter would be one who was part of the conspiracy.
Helen takes on Barr's case because she is convinced that her father's perfect record as a DA is built on these. She thinks that he intimidates suspects into confessing to crimes they did not commit by threatening them with the death penalty, and his record reinforces the belief that he could definitely convict them were they to go to trial.
James Barr makes one of those because he has amnesia and fears that he had another psychotic episode . He gets key elements of the crime wrong, which convinces the DA that the guy is innocent.
Famed In-Story : Played with. Reacher is a ghost to most people and even the DA cannot find anything much about his civilian existence, although he does get hold of his extensive military records. However, among military snipers, Reacher was famous enough that Gunny Cash still remembers him after many years.
Faux Affably Evil : Charlie turns on the charm right before he murders Sandy.
Final Boss : Charlie, who is the only one to give Reacher a decent fight in the climax.
Zec had to bite off most of his fingers during his imprisonment in Siberia. He tests the fortitude of one of his hired men by forcing him to try to do the same. This might seem unfair, as the reason the Zec bit off the fingers of his left hand was that said fingers had become frostbitten ; his jailers refused to give him medical care, so he had to gnaw them off or die of gangrene. It was gross, but dead flesh has no nerves, so it wasn't any more painful than chewing off fingernails. However, he chewed off the fingers of his right hand without any such advantage, purely to avoid being worked to death in the sulfur mines.
Before killing Charlie, Reacher breaks his fingers. The sound of his bones crunching is played to full effect for the audience to enjoy as Charlie cries out in pain.
When the movie actually takes a break from the investigation of James Barr to show video of each person who ended up shot going about their business leading up to being shot in the park, you know one of them will actually be important to the plot or they would simply be mentioned in an offhand manner.
Mooks have a tendency to meet up in places where road construction is going on, such as next to Jeb's house. The Big Bad 's legal business front is a construction company.
Charlie is alerted when Helen and Reacher ask the police for a license plate registration check. A certain dirty cop is monitoring their case. Another clue is when Zec is shown the same file on Jack Reacher that Emerson was perusing.
During the montage when Reacher reminisces the sniper rampage James Barr did in Afghanistan, we see Barr set up his kill zone so his targets would be on a position where they would be standing in single file and moving towards or away from him , and when Reacher researches the massacre site we get an Imagine Spot of Barr performing it from the bridge. Same set-up. This is then followed by Reacher saying that it could not be Barr; the set up goes against everything he would have been taught in sniper school. The actual shooter is someone who 1) is better than Barr and 2) looking to set Barr up .
Emerson seems taken aback by Reacher asking why Barr would pay for parking in the garage when he's about to murder five people. Emerson seems to simply think it's just an odd thing to focus on. Emerson knew to look for the quarter, despite having no reason to do so, because he was in on the frame-up and an early sign that Reacher doesn't fully buy the official story.
Frame-Up : Sandy is murdered and Reacher is framed for it, as an attempt to tie up both loose ends. James Barr is also being framed, the reason Reacher is involved in the first place. After shooting Zec, Reacher drops Emerson's pistol by his hand, to make it look like the villains all shot each other.
Genius Bruiser : Reacher, true to form, is an exceptionally skilled detective and investigator capable of impressive feats of deductive reasoning as well as a skilled tactician in addition to being a brutal combatant who can demolish multiple opponents with no issue.
Good Is Not Nice : Reacher can come across as a real asshole, often insulting and bullying people even if it's for a good cause. And at the end, he has no interest in leaving the Zec's fate up to the law.
Go-to Alias : Whenever Reacher needs an alias, he uses the name of a former Yankees second baseman. Gunny is the only one who immediately sees through the fake name.
Grievous Harm with a Body : Downplayed, but no less effective; in the bathroom fight scene, Reacher knocks down one guy onto another and smashes the top guy's head into the bottom guy's head until both are out.
Groin Attack : Reacher does this twice during the fight with Jeb's thugs, to discourage the others.
Head Crushing : Jack has deduced the culprits behind a sniper serial killing, and comes to their lair to confront them. Reacher conducts a hand-to-hand duel with The Dragon Charlie, prefaced with a Badass Boast that he'll stomp on Charlie's head. Which he does. *crunch*
Hello, Attorney! : Helen, especially when she wears low-cut tops.
In the flashback about James Barr's psychotic episode, his silencer only hides the muzzle flash and somewhat dampens the sound; the gunshots are still more than loud enough to cause echoes.
When Charlie fires a silenced handgun, the sound is (correctly) the high-pitched metallic clang of the pistol's action rather than the standard Hollywood fwip .
Homeless Hero : Reacher lives almost completely off the grid, the only means of tracking him being his withdrawals from a military pension account (which would require a federal warrant). He lives out of motels and gets his clothes from the Goodwill. He explains that he does this to be free, pointing out that all the normal trappings of life serve to limit that freedom, and even wonders how many others would do the same if they could.
Honey Trap : Sandy tries to chat up Reacher in the bar, but he won't take the bait (largely because Sandy is implied to be underage ). Then Sandy's 'brothers' turn up, intent on avenging the 'insult' to their sister.
Hostage Situation : Lampshaded by Reacher when Helen is kidnapped ; "You'll bounce me around to make sure I'm not followed, then walk me into an ambush and kill me." He then goes on to be the first action hero in history to not only defy but invert it; he's got all the evidence he needs, so unless they give up their location so he can come try and kill them when he is damn good and ready, he'll just cut his losses and hand everything to the FBI.
If I Wanted You Dead... : Why Reacher is convinced Barr is innocent; he has the training to ensure that none of the evidence should have remained, so if he had done it, no one would have known. At the same time Reacher knows Barr wouldn't have been able to shoot five targets from across the river from his military records, he would have chosen a different spot.
Gunny in the final shootout, considering he's deliberately trying to avoid lethal shots. This makes some of his shots, like the wounding of one of the bad guys straight through a wall or a quick, hasty shot that knocked the rifle out of Charlie's hand, all the more impressive.
Reacher had this reputation while he was in the army and Gunny tests him by having him hit the center area of the target at long range three times in a row while using an unfamiliar rifle and only being allowed a single ranging shot. Reacher hits the target area with all three shots even though he is seriously out of practice. Gunny, a master shot himself, is seriously impressed.
This is also discussed and deconstructed as a crucial plot point. Reacher points out that the location from which James Barr supposedly did his killings had multiple issues making it a poor vantage point and crime scene location: Long distance, wind resistance, security cameras capturing him and his van, shell casings and fingerprints left behind, targets coming from the side and the sun in his eyes. Even a highly skilled marksman would have had difficulty in such conditions and soldiers are trained not to overcome such difficulties but avoid them entirely. Reacher points out that while Barr wasn't skilled enough to pull off such difficult shots, he was trained enough to know not to work from such a poor location when a better one existed on the highway, removing all of the above. This is what clues him into Barr not being the killer.
Improbable Infant Survival : In the opening sniper scene, the gunman's final target is a young woman running for safety, carrying a child with her. While we never see that bullet's impact, it is later mentioned in passing that the little girl survived.
Inadvertent Entrance Cue : The DA and Emerson are wondering how they could possibly find this Reacher guy when he's off the grid when the secretary informs them there's a Jack Reacher wanting to see them.
Interservice Rivalry : Gunny, a US Marine, repeatedly makes jabs at Reacher, who used to be US Army Military Police.
It's All About Me : When Helen and Alex Rodin meet after Helen interviews the father of one of the victims, Alex questions Helen why is she doing this... and phrases it as an act of rebellion against her father. Helen actually points it out in disgust .
It's Personal : During the final showdown, Reacher catches the Zec's Dragon off-guard and has him at gunpoint. Rather than simply gun him down, Reacher has him disarm then fights him hand-to-hand, making good on his earlier Badass Boast in retaliation for Sandy's death.
It's What I Do : Zed's justification for his evil acts.
Reacher despises Barr because Barr got away with four murders .
Zec thinks he is this because none of the crimes can be connected to him. Reacher executes him to avert this.
Laser-Guided Karma : Reacher breaks the fingers on Charlie's gun hand, leaving him in the same condition as his boss, the Zec.
Last-Name Basis : Reacher is referred to by this exclusively though unlike the books, it's not out of his insistence so much as others just doing it naturally. Were it not for the title of the film and it being mentioned in the opening scenes, a casual viewer might be forgiven for not even knowing his first name.
Let's Fight Like Gentlemen : When Reacher confronts Charlie, he disarms him, then throws away his own gun so they can have a fistfight. Notably, this is very out of character for Reacher, who in the books tends to just shoot his enemies; as Charlie murdered an innocent girl as a Frame-Up , Reacher wants to make him hurt . He does summarily execute the Zec, however .
Life-or-Limb Decision : The Big Bad claims to have done this years ago to escape a Siberian mob. When a Mook fails him, he offers to let him live if he chews off his fingers to prove his determination like he did. The minion can't bring himself to do it and the villain kills him.
Mistaken for Prostitute : Jack meets a woman named Sandy at a bar, but doesn't tell her his name to remain undercover. When she invites him to drive with her, he tells her "I'm sorry I can't afford you." She gets offended and defends her by saying that she isn't a hooker and that she works at the Auto Parts Store.
Mook Chivalry : Discussed . Reacher reasons that it's almost never actually a 5-on-1 fight when it comes to amateurs, it's a sorting tier of one group leader asserting dominance by himself, then one or two enthusiastic wingmen who will follow, then multiple cowards that will join in if their side is winning and flee if they're not. For these reasons, they attack one or two at a time and the fight is a Curb-Stomp Battle against them.
Mr. Fanservice : Reacher, being Tom Cruise, gets a Walking Shirtless Scene for the ladies in the audience and one at the start in a changing room with his six pack abs on full display.
Ms. Fanservice : The woman wearing only a thong that's in bed with Reacher in the trailer. Sandy likes a midriff-exposing outfit. While she never wears anything revealing, Helen Rodin is also pretty easy on the eyes, being played by Rosamund Pike .
Morton's Fork : Discussed. In a scene where Jack Reacher is talking with Gunny about the camera footage that is linked to Barr, when he notes the camera in the room. Jack Reacher: You know one of these nuts is likely to kill you when they find that camera there. Gunny: Hell, the camera's there because one of these nuts is likely to kill me.
Mugging the Monster : Five youths try to fight Reacher. He delivers a quick Curb-Stomp Battle . They were just hired thugs and he does not look like the most threating individual when taking a quiet drink. Also, he warned them several times.
A Mook leaping to this conclusion not only costs him his life, but provides the best lead Jack gets.
The reason for the initial killing; a woman won't sell her company, so the Zec decides she must be killed.
Decided, of all people, by the protagonist, Jack Reacher himself at the end, when Zec points out that the law will never punish him.
Names to Run Away from Really Fast : Zec Chilovek, the Big Bad . Russian for "Prisoner Human Being". Hard and cold as a Siberian winter .
Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight : Reacher has a You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me! reaction when Gunny hands him a K-Bar knife instead of the Sniper Rifle he's carrying (see Surprisingly Realistic Outcome ). Then during the subsequent shoot-out, he drops the knife and has to resort to using a rock.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero : At the end, Jack has killed all of the witnesses against the Zec, leaving murder as the only way to bring him to justice.
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain : Linsky, the local "franchisee" for Lebendauer Enterprises. He's the one who sets up Sandy and her "brothers" to try and beat up Reacher, because he can't directly contact Charlie and the Zek, and kills Jeb to try to tie up loose ends, only that further galvanizes Reacher that there's something else going on. Even Charlie and the Zek both lament that Linsky ended up making this situation much worse by trying to take matters into his own hands.
Not Me This Time : Barr did commit five murders in Afghanistan but got away with it but he's innocent of the ones he's been accused of here.
"Not So Different" Remark : Helen asks Reacher if he won't settle down because he's worried he'll end up like Barr. At the end of the movie, Reacher says he actually worries that he'll end up like Gunny.
Obfuscating Stupidity : Reacher pretends a gas bill he found in Jeb's car is a warrant to search his house. When he sees a crack pipe next to the old lady on the porch, he assumes she's too zonked to notice anyway, so just walks in. Then the old lady takes a mobile phone from under her shawl and phones Jeb's friends.
An Offer You Can't Refuse : Reacher gets Gunny's initial cooperation by threatening to make it public that Barr, a suspected mass killer, used Gunny's gun range to practice. The bad publicity would wreck Gunny's business.
When Reacher tracks down Sandy after the bar fight: Sandy: Shit!
Helen gets this when Reacher first says the word "Patsy" . She realizes that her entire approach to the case has been massively flawed.
The look on the Zec 's face when the man who would do anything to survive realizes he's just talked himself into a death sentence.
In the epilogue, Barr's reaction to the crimes he's accused of (now that he can't remember not doing them) is equal parts regret for supposedly doing them and fear of what Reacher will do to him as a result .
Helen realises the grieving father she's interviewing has a cocked Colt automatic on his desk, and seems angry enough to use it on her.
Older Hero Versus Younger Villain : Reacher goes up against the much younger Charlie. The exact ages are never specified but Jai Courtney is twenty-four years younger than Tom Cruise.
Orgy of Evidence : Reacher quickly realizes that this is the case against James Barr. Too bad he missed the key element until the very end; only a sniper who wants to plant evidence would pay for parking and thereby leave a thumbprint on the quarter, but only a crooked cop would know to look for said quarter.
Out-of-Character Alert : What makes the Orgy of Evidence so suspicious is that an important part of sniper training isn't just aiming and firing, but choosing where to shoot from ; the optimal firing position wouldn't have left any evidence, and someone with Barr's training would know better (and did, back when Reacher caught him the first time) than to leave any. note In the parking garage, the shooter had the sun in his eyes, and his targets were moving left and right and that's on top of it being much further away from the targets and having security cameras. But a nearby highway bridge was an obvious alternate position where the sun would have been behind him, with his targets straight ahead, single file - one where he could have made the shots without leaving his van, meaning no shell casings would have been left for the police to find, he wouldn't have been caught on camera, and he could have just driven away with no-one the wiser. Thus, the parking garage was chosen to match the type of location Barr chose for his actual shooting spree in Afghanistan, and to leave as much manufactured evidence as possible, not for tactical reasons.
Pants-Positive Safety : Played with in a creative way during the final showdown. Reacher's only weapon is a K-Bar combat knife in a scabbard he hadn't had the time to fasten to his belt, and when things get hectic he stuffs it into the back of his pants instead. A couple of desperate combat rolls to cover later he reaches for it, only to realize that he lost the knife almost immediately, and now it's far beyond his reach.
Paper-Thin Disguise : After no place to run any further, Jack simply gets out of his car, leaves it rolling on the street, and stands with the crowd on the bus stop . It only works as long as the crowd willingly ignores the crazy stunt he just pulled and nobody is willing to point him out to the cops. And nobody did, so he casually rides away in the bus, right out of the massive swarm of police officers. One bystander is helpful enough to give Jack his hat to help him blend in further , however.
Persecuting Prosecutor : Alex Rodin, the Pittsburgh District Attorney, got his fame as an undefeated prosecutor because he bullied many criminals into signing confessions without any further investigation or allowing them to see their attorneys first. Helen Rodin, the DA's own daughter, is pretty sure that many innocent people have ended up in jail or worse as a result and takes the Barr case to fight this. Both Helen and Reacher believe that Rodin is in bed with Lebendauer because of this, but he turns out to be a Red Herring .
Photographic Memory : Reacher has this, which is part of the reason he's so scarily competent as an investigator.
Pint-Sized Powerhouse : Reacher. He's The Big Guy in the books, but Cruise is far from sizeable. Still, it doesn't stop him from demolishing mooks left and right.
Please Put Some Clothes On : While Reacher is washing his shirt in the sink, Helen becomes Distracted by the Sexy . Helen: What more do you want? They were five innocent people. Senselessly murd — I'm sorry, can you please put a shirt on? Jack: This is my shirt.
Precision F-Strike : Emerson and Rodin ask Helen where Reacher is. She says she doesn't know, and Rodin tells Emerson he thinks she's telling the truth. Helen spits back, "Oh, you 'think', Dad?! Fuck you!"
Pre-Mortem One-Liner : When the Zec taunts Reacher at the end to see which one of them will go to prison, Reacher replies, "My bet? Neither one." He then shoots the Zec in the head.
Protagonist Title : For this film, the original title of the book isn't mentioned.
Pun : The Conspiracy is called Lebendauer Enterprises — German for "Lifespan" — because its founder spent most of his life in prison; QED a "Lifer" .
Reacher spots a possible connection between two of the victims, who he suspects were having an affair. This has nothing to do with why it happened, only serving as an example of how what seems like a coincidence may be something more.
Later on, Reacher realizes someone on the prosecution is involved with the frame-up. He believes the most likely candidate is Helen's father, the undefeated district attorney. This turns out to be simply wrong.
At one point, it looks like Gunny is part of the conspiracy, and will try to shoot Reacher on the firing range. Instead, we cut to Gunny congratulating Reacher on his score, having worked out who he is.
This is the only reason Reacher's escape from the police after the Car Chase works out. If any of the two dozen people at the bus station would've done the sensible thing and alerted the cops, the film might've taken a different turn.
Reacher is able to dictate the final battle on his terms because he refuses to consider Helen's life worth more than his own, thus denying Charlie any leverage beyond the knowledge that Reacher will try to rescue her.
The Zec is convinced that he'll avoid prison after all his mooks have been killed, reasoning that the former military homeless guy is a much more likely suspect than a nameless old man missing several fingers; and Jack has just killed all of the other witnesses. Reacher agrees... then kills him in cold blood.
Refuse to Rescue the Disliked : Reacher at first absolutely refuses to clear Barr's name because of the killing spree that the latter got away with in Afghanistan. It's only after the Lebandauer conspiracy tries to get Reacher out of the way that he decides to look into it .
Retired Monster : While serving in the military, James Barr killed four people (who coincidentally turned out to be war criminals) just to see what it would feel like, got Off on a Technicality , and, after a Scare 'Em Straight warning from Reacher, turns out to to have gotten a 9-to-5 job and never entertained the idea of using his gun outside of a shooting range again.
Revealing Cover-Up : Jack knows Barr is psychotic enough to have gone on the shooting spree, so he would have blown in and out of town without a second thought... except when he decides to kill some time in a bar while rubbing Helen's face in the murders, he's dragged into a bar fight under very suspicious circumstances; a girl approaches him and is thrown when he gives a false name, five thugs accost him supposedly to "defend the girl's honor", and cops arrive so quickly the only reason they arrive after the fight is because Jack stomped them in less than a minute. From that point on, Jack is in full investigator mode, Spotting the Thread almost immediately. The Zec actually points out what a massive screw-up it was .
Revealing Skill : Part of what makes Reacher suspicious is the difficulty of the shots taken in the killing spree. The killer chose an extremely poor position to shoot from, only missed once (on purpose), and only missed after successfully hitting several people. Reacher concludes that not only would Barr not do this in the first place because it runs counter to how he was trained, he's not good enough to have done it at all.
Reveal Shot : After a montage showing how the police track down the shooter, and Barr's interrogation, we finally get a proper look at his face...and realise he's not the same man.
Running Gag : Reacher helping himself to other people's cars.
Ruthless Foreign Gangsters : The Zec and his crew are very much this; what they cannot control, they kill (and what they can control, they obtained control of by making quite clear that the choice is being controlled or dying horribly).
Sadistic Choice : The DA offers suspects the choice of either signing a confession for a reduced sentence or going up against an undefeated DA who will seek the death penalty against them (one presumes this is limited to suspects for whom that is an available sentence). Helen believes her father has coerced false confessions through this method, if not intentionally then simply as a consequence of scaring the perp.
Saying Too Much : Zec gloats to Reacher that Reacher is a homeless drifter wanted for murder and he is a seemingly harmless old man and since all his men are dead, Reacher has no one to back up his claims of Zec being behind everything. Reacher concedes that he has a point... by opting to simply shoot him in the head.
Serial Killings, Specific Target : The owner of a local construction company was the intended victim. The other four murders were just to disguise this.
Sherlock Scan : Reacher is pretty good at these, probably due to his wide range of experience as a former military policeman.
Shoot the Hostage Taker : Emerson hides behind Helen, pointing a gun at her head and another at the only door that Reacher can come through. Reacher kills him with a single shot, with iron sights. Helen is so stunned she can't even move until Reacher puts his hand on her shoulder.
Shout-Out : Both of Reacher's aliases (Aaron Ward and Jimmie Reese) were baseball players for the New York Yankees.
Shrouded in Myth : Other than the official records they have on him from his time in the military, nobody knows anything about Jack Reacher other than he exists, is out there somewhere, and is a total badass.
Sickening "Crunch!" : During his fight with Charlie, Reacher gets hold of his hand and twists it in an unnatural manner, leading to a positive gruesome sound of bones snapping and Charlie screaming in agony. Ouch.
Silence Is Golden : The first line of dialogue is not spoken until eight and a half minutes into the film; the entire opening murder and the police investigation into it are conducted without dialogue. Multiple later sections of the film are also conducted with no dialogue whatsoever, such as the car chase and the Battle in the Rain near the end of the movie.
Sociopathic Soldier : Jack admits these exist; but they tend to be sociopaths before they enlisted. James Barr was one of these, having eventually snapped and gone on a shooting rampage in Baghdad just so that he could feed his urge to kill; the only reason he got away with it was because, unbeknownst to him, his victims all had it coming, and the Private Military Contractors that they worked for didn't pursue justice because they knew that the victims' crimes would be exposed if they did so. Charlie is implied (stated in the book) to be ex-military, and is a stone-cold killer. Jack Reacher: There are four types of people who join the military. For some, it's a family trade. Others are patriots, eager to serve. Next you have those who just need a job. Then there's the kind who want a legal means of killing other people.
Soft-Spoken Sadist : The Zec.
Something Else Also Rises : Reacher compares the frustration of not being able to kill to sexual frustration. When he's saying this, a flashback shows Barr in Iraq, pushing a knife through a blanket draped over his crotch with obvious Freudian symbolism. You ever been hungry, been horny, you have an itch you can't scratch? Imagine that feeling, days, weeks, years, imagine that feeling times a thousand. Imagine that it's 130 degrees on the deck and tomorrow you're going home. And you know that if you don't scratch that itch now, you never will. You need a release, you need a target, and the who of it never once enters your mind.
Reacher fully believes that Barr is the shooter and is there only to make sure he goes down... until he sees the quarter with Barr's fingerprint on it with the evidence. Not only does it make no sense for Barr to make sure he's paid the parking meter right before shooting five random people in cold blood, but it also makes no sense for Emerson to investigate the meter unless he knew the quarter would be there beforehand.
Next, with a seed of doubt in his mind, Reacher investigates the location of the shooting and deems it a poor vantage point due to the location of the sun and targets moving left-and-right. He finds another location nearby on a freeway that would have been ideal for a shooter with the targets coming towards him, the sun not in his eyes, no cameras and which would have prevented empty shells from being left behind as evidence and allowed him to make an easy getaway. He also discovers that not only was Barr deemed merely a 'decent' sniper while in the Army and wasn't good enough to shoot so accurately from a non-ideal location, but that he was trained well enough not to use said location when there was a better one available.
All six shots that the sniper fired came in quick succession... except for a several second pause between shot one and two. Reacher determines that this means the sniper was extra careful with his second shot, meaning the second target was killed for an actual purpose. Serial Killings, Specific Target .
Five of the shots the sniper took were perfect, while the fourth shot missed by a lot and ended up in a location where the bullet would be preserved perfectly to be used for evidence. Reacher reasons that the shooter intentionally put one of his rounds in a perfect location to be found by police for the evidence in the case against Barr.
Reacher uses a fake name when Sandy approaches him at a bar, and sees she's thrown by it even though she had no reason to be. From this, and the barfight that follows, he believes that someone is trying to run him off the case, which leads to him eventually blowing the entire plan.
Jeb hasn't been seen for a while by his friends, who all think he's left town. Reacher checks his house and finds evidence that Jeb quickly packed some things and left...except the shower curtain is gone too, leading him to think that someone (who wasn't very smart) simply raided the house to make it look like Jeb had left. Or perhaps the curtain was torn down in a struggle. Or made an ideal drop cloth for a body.
Improbable Aiming Skills are just that — improbable. All of the amazing complications super-snipers overcome — sun in a bad position, windage, erratically moving targets, extreme range — are things real snipers are actually trained to avoid so as to make easier shots and Barr wasn't skilled enough to have killed five people in such conditions but he was smart and trained enough to know to choose locations to avoid such issues, choosing a parking garage over a nearby freeway which would've not only kept the sun from his eyes and made the targets easier to hit but would've also avoided cameras, not left behind any evidence and had an easy getaway. Reacher thus notices the killings are a Revealing Cover-Up .
Real Bar Brawls are usually very low key; most so-called "tough guys" are unskilled at teamwork, unfamiliar with pain or a confident opponent, and a trained fighter will seriously wreck their shit — even five-on-one.
Your average Mook is just an average human being, clumsy and unfamiliar with combat - which is demonstrated when two guys with a crowbar and an aluminum baseball bat attack Reacher in a bathroom. It's hard to tell which takes more damage from their efforts — the bathroom or each other .
The purpose of a gun is to shoot someone from more than a few feet away; a third guy sticks a gun in Reacher's face, he slaps it aside, grabs it, and traps the guy's hand in the trigger guard to torture information and the keys to his car out of him.
Car Chases have a significant obstacle; other cars . So Reacher breaks line-of-sight, abandons the car, and blends into a crowd that is quite willing to harbor him.
Not every theory the protagonist comes up with is correct; see Red Herring .
Most criminals are only threatening because most people are unused to conflict, which is why most police work is a simple desk job. Lebendauer Enterprises is only as dangerous as it is because it is led and staffed by actual soldiers — which aren't all that common in criminal enterprises.
Just because you meet a Cool Old Guy who owns a lot of guns and is sympathetic to your cause doesn't mean he's willing to kill strangers for you or let you shoot strangers with guns he owns.
A guy capable of realistically surviving an action movie is not charismatic, he is fucking terrifying.
Driving backwards in a car, despite it having a rear parking camera (which gets shot out), is a bad plan of attack. Especially if you run over something that leaves your car immobile, like a rock. To quote Reacher: Jack Reacher: This is a bad idea.
Actual fights are far less flashy and impressive than in films with all of Reacher's battles consisting mainly of straightforward moves and his opponents realistically reacting in pain or getting winded from exhaustion and even Reacher himself getting knocked over or disoriented.
When faced with a villain who has no past, considerable wealth and connections, isn't afraid of prison even if he does go and has a plausible cover story of being a harmless old man while Reacher is wanted for murder and just killed everyone else, Reacher simply takes another option and kills Zec in cold blood, to make sure he won't escape justice.
Take a Third Option : When given the Sadistic Choice by the DA, Barr simply writes "Find Jack Reacher" instead, knowing Reacher will figure out what's really going on.
Television Geography : At the beginning of the Chase Scene , after Jack begins chasing Charlie from the motel, Emerson radios in that the police are pursuing Jack along Pennsylvania State Route 65, AKA Ohio River Boulevard. note This would make sense, as the actual site of the motel that was used as a shooting location was located along Ohio River Boulevard near the suburb of Sewickley The next part of the chase involves Jack chasing Charlie's truck across the Monongahela River via 10th Street Bridge and proceeding through the Armstrong Tunnel from Southside to Uptown. While not impossible, these two roads are located on the northwestern and southern parts of Pittsburgh, respectively, and on opposite sides of Downtown, meaning that the chase scene would have had to have crossed at least one bridge just to get to a point where it could go over another bridge.
Spree Killer : James Barr already had a spree shooting in his personal history (investigated by Reacher and tossed under the rug because, unknown to him, he killed a bunch of rapists ) and is framed as the man responsible for the massacre we see in the prologue because of this by the real party, the Zec's organization, who was aiming for Serial Killings, Specific Target .
Taking the Fight Outside : "Hey, outside," barks Jeb to Jack Reacher after Jack blew off Sandy. She responds by rallying her regulars into a band of five mooks to issue Jack a comeuppance. As a courtesy, Jack gives the thugs a chance to stand down, since they're about to engage a retired U.S. Army military policeman. Bullying a Dragon proves a big mistake, so the floozy flees.
This Is Gonna Suck : Reacher drives Helen's car in reverse towards the villain's hideout while henchmen open fire on him. All he has to say is "This was a bad idea."
Unresolved Sexual Tension : Between Helen and Reacher, but it remains unresolved.
Varying Competency Alibi : James Barr, a former Army sniper, is accused of the sniper murders, but Jack doesn't believe it. The shots were from a rather awkward position when a better one was available, and the only miss conveniently preserved the bullet. This suggests that Barr simply isn't a good enough marksman to have pulled off the killings: they had to have been performed by one of the finest shooters in the world, and Barr was merely decent . It turns out that not only was James Barr framed, but the shooter choose the position not to kill random people but a specific person to hide among a random spree .
Villain Opening Scene : The movie begins with Charlie sniping at five innocent bystanders from a parking garage.
Weak, but Skilled : This version of Reacher lacks his counterpart's extreme strength , though he compensates by being well-versed in martial arts, which comes in sharp contrast with Book!Reacher's fighting style .
You Have Failed Me : The Zec is willing to spare his minion's life if he proves his commitment by biting off the fingers on his left hand, but he can't do it and is shot dead by Charlie.
Helen's expression when, in the middle of a tense phone call about the criminal conspiracy, Reacher admits that he stole her car.
Reacher's own expression when all Gunny brought him for a long, disadvantageous fight against several Mooks is a single K-Bar knife, rather than any guns.
Your Princess Is in Another Castle! : Reacher attacks a prefab hut in the quarry and takes out the guards, only to find out Helen is being kept in another hut.
Jack Reacher
Franchise/Jack Reacher
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
The Way of the Gun
Creator/Christopher McQuarrie
Mission: Impossible Film Series
Heart of Stone
Creator/Skydance Media
Films of the 2010s – Franchises
I Wanted Wings
Creator/Paramount

Important Links

Action Adventure
Commercials
Crime & Punishment
Professional Wrestling
Speculative Fiction
Sports Story
Animation (Western)
Music And Sound Effects
Print Media
Sequential Art
Tabletop Games
Applied Phlebotinum
Characterization
Characters As Device
Narrative Devices
British Telly
The Contributors
Creator Speak
Derivative Works
Laws And Formulas
Show Business
Split Personality
Truth And Lies
Truth In Television
Fate And Prophecy
Image Fixer
New Articles
Edit Reasons
Isolated Pages
Images List
Recent Videos
Crowner Activity
Un-typed Pages
Recent Page Type Changes
Trope Entry
Character Sheet
Playing With
Creating New Redirects
Cross Wicking
Tips for Editing
Text Formatting Rules
Handling Spoilers
Administrivia
Trope Repair Shop
Image Pickin'

Past Factory

The All-Time Greatest Actors In War Movies

Posted: June 19, 2024 | Last updated: June 19, 2024

<p>It's not unusual for actors to fit in a role like a hand does a glove, and audiences couldn't imagine the movie with anyone else. Well, this same concept applies to war movies just like any other genre. Not only are some actors naturally talented at their craft, they also have a calling for wielding a sword or shouting battle commands in front of a camera. Not every Hollywood actor can pull this off, but here are some that certainly can and have. Read on to learn more. </p>

It's not unusual for actors to fit in a role like a hand does a glove, and audiences couldn't imagine the movie with anyone else. Well, this same concept applies to war movies just like any other genre.

Not only are some actors naturally talented at their craft, they also have a calling for wielding a sword or shouting battle commands in front of a camera. Not every Hollywood actor can pull this off, but here are some that certainly can and have. Just keep reading through in order to learn more.

<p>Actor Martin Sheen has an impressive career in the entertainment industry, spanning decades, and involves feature films and television appearances. One of his most notable roles is the conflicted Captain Willard in Francis Ford Coppola's famous 1979 film <i>Apocalypse Now.</i></p> <p>In the film, Willard is assigned a secret mission to travel by river from South Vietnam to Cambodia where he is ordered to murder the renegade Colonel Kurtz who is accused of murder and is believed to have lost his mind. For his performance, Sheen received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. </p>

Martin Sheen Stars In One Of The Most Classic War Films Ever Made

Actor Martin Sheen has an impressive career in the entertainment industry, spanning decades, and involves feature films and television appearances. One of his most notable roles is the conflicted Captain Willard in Francis Ford Coppola's famous 1979 film Apocalypse Now.

In the film, Willard is assigned a secret mission to travel by river from South Vietnam to Cambodia where he is ordered to murder the renegade Colonel Kurtz who is accused of murder and is believed to have lost his mind. For his performance, Sheen received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor.

<p>It's well-known that Mel Gibson has no problem taking on projects heavily entrenched in blood, guts, and in some cases, major controversy. Take <i>The Passion of the Christ,</i> for example. </p> <p>Also not necessarily revered for the historical accuracy in many of his films, there's no doubt that Gibson likes his fair share of conflict and violence. He has starred in numerous war films that include, <i>Braveheart, The Patriot, We Were Soldiers, Gallipoli, </i>and directed others such as <i>Apocolaypto </i>and <i>Hacksaw Ridge.</i></p> <p><b><a href="https://www.pastfactory.com/history/life-in-a-medieval-castle/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Read More: What It Was Like To Live In A Medieval Castle</a></b></p>

Mel Gibson Is The King Of War And Gore

It's well-known that Mel Gibson has no problem taking on projects heavily entrenched in blood, guts, and in some cases, major controversy. Take The Passion of the Christ, for example.

Also not necessarily revered for the historical accuracy in many of his films, there's no doubt that Gibson likes his fair share of conflict and violence. He has starred in numerous war films that include, Braveheart, The Patriot, We Were Soldiers, Gallipoli, and directed others such as Apocolaypto and Hacksaw Ridge.

Read More: What It Was Like To Live In A Medieval Castle

<p>Over the years, Gerard Butler has established himself as an actor that can do it all, from romantic comedies to high-budget films; he's become incredibly sought-after. He's also appeared in war films such as <i>Hunter Killer, Gods of Egypt, Timeline, </i>and more. Yet, the one role that brought him to the forefront of the action genre is his performance as King Leonidas in the highly-stylized and ultra-violent <i>300. </i></p> <p>Faced with a Persian threat of invasion, Leonidas leads 300 of his best soldiers and some fellow Greeks in an attempt to hold back the behemoth Persian force from entering Greece. At the 2007 MTV Movie Awards, Butler was nominated for Best Actor and <i>300 </i>for Best Movie. </p>

Gerard Butler Fits The Role As King Leonidas In 300

Over the years, Gerard Butler has established himself as an actor that can do it all, from romantic comedies to high-budget films; he's become incredibly sought-after. He's also appeared in war films such as Hunter Killer, Gods of Egypt, Timeline, and more. Yet, the one role that brought him to the forefront of the action genre is his performance as King Leonidas in the highly-stylized and ultra-violent 300.

Faced with a Persian threat of invasion, Leonidas leads 300 of his best soldiers and some fellow Greeks in an attempt to hold back the behemoth Persian force from entering Greece. At the 2007 MTV Movie Awards, Butler was nominated for Best Actor and 300 for Best Movie.

<p>Although Tom Hanks may not necessarily be the first actor that comes to mind in a discussion about war films, he stars in one of the greatest and most realistic ever made. He plays United States Army Rangers, Captain John H. Miller, in Steven Spielberg's 1998 classic, <i>Saving Private Ryan. </i></p> <p>The film follows Miller and his squad during World War II as they go behind enemy lines in France in order to find one man. Considered one of the greatest films of all time, Hanks has also received immense respect for the role. </p>

Tom Hanks Takes Point In Saving Private Ryan

Although Tom Hanks may not necessarily be the first actor that comes to mind in a discussion about war films, he stars in one of the greatest and most realistic ever made. He plays United States Army Rangers, Captain John H. Miller, in Steven Spielberg's 1998 classic, Saving Private Ryan.

The film follows Miller and his squad during World War II as they go behind enemy lines in France in order to find one man. Considered one of the greatest films of all time, Hanks has also received immense respect for the role.

<p>Willem Dafoe has acted in several war films, both historical and fantastical. He was involved in projects such as <i>Born on the Fourth of July, Flight of the Intruder, The Great Wall, </i>and countless other blockbuster and independent films. Nevertheless, his most notable role in a war film is Sergeant Elias in 1986's <i>Platoon, </i>a film about the morality of war during the Vietnam War. </p> <p>Although the film is renowned for a number of reasons, one of the most memorable scenes is when Sgt. Elias is attempting to get to safety as he is shot several times by North Vietnamese soldiers. </p>

Willem Dafoe Dies Heroically In Platoon

Willem Dafoe has acted in several war films, both historical and fantastical. He was involved in projects such as Born on the Fourth of July, Flight of the Intruder, The Great Wall, and countless other blockbuster and independent films. Nevertheless, his most notable role in a war film is Sergeant Elias in 1986's Platoon, a film about the morality of war during the Vietnam War.

Although the film is renowned for a number of reasons, one of the most memorable scenes is when Sgt. Elias is attempting to get to safety as he is shot several times by North Vietnamese soldiers.

<p>Referred to as the "King of Cool," Steve McQueen was arguably one of the greatest actors of the 1960s and 1970s. Known for his antihero roles, at one point, he was the highest-paid actor in the world. He played various roles, including those in war films such as <i>The Sand Pebbles, Hell is for Heroes, </i>and possibly his most famous, <i>The Great Escape. </i></p> <p><i>The Great Escape </i>is based on the actual events during World War I involving a mass escape of British soldiers from a German POW camp. McQueen stars as Captain Virgil Hilts, the leader, earning him the Best Actor award at the Moscow International Film Festival. </p>

Steve McQueen Never Shied Away From War Films

Referred to as the "King of Cool," Steve McQueen was arguably one of the greatest actors of the 1960s and 1970s. Known for his antihero roles, at one point, he was the highest-paid actor in the world. He played various roles, including those in war films such as The Sand Pebbles, Hell is for Heroes, and possibly his most famous, The Great Escape.

The Great Escape is based on the actual events during World War I involving a mass escape of British soldiers from a German POW camp. McQueen stars as Captain Virgil Hilts, the leader, earning him the Best Actor award at the Moscow International Film Festival.

<p>A twice nominated Best Actor at the Academy Awards, Jude Law, has established himself as a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood. After receiving attention for his performance in 1999's <i>The Talented Mr. Ripley, </i>he showed what he was truly capable of in the 2001 war film, <i>Enemy at the Gates. </i></p> <p>The film depicts the true story of the Battle of Stalingrad during the winter of 1942-1943, in which Law plays the fictionalized sniper Vasily Zaystev and his prolonged cat and mouse game with an enemy sniper. </p>

Jude Law Becomes An Unexpected War Hero In Enemy At The Gates

A twice nominated Best Actor at the Academy Awards, Jude Law, has established himself as a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood. After receiving attention for his performance in 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley, he showed what he was truly capable of in the 2001 war film, Enemy at the Gates.

The film depicts the true story of the Battle of Stalingrad during the winter of 1942-1943, in which Law plays the fictionalized sniper Vasily Zaystev and his prolonged cat and mouse game with an enemy sniper.

<p>In 1987, Stanley Kubrick released his film <i>Full Metal Jacket, </i>which follows a platoon of United States Marines beginning with their boot camp training and their experiences during the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War. </p> <p>While the film is regarded as one of the greatest war films made, one aspect that makes it stand out is Lee Ermey's addition as the drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. Ermey was initially supposed to be a technical advisor but managed to wow Kubrick with his ability to play the drill sergeant role and the deplorable insults he could come up with on the spot. </p>

Lee Ermey Ad-Libbed Most Of His Lines In Full Metal Jacket

In 1987, Stanley Kubrick released his film Full Metal Jacket, which follows a platoon of United States Marines beginning with their boot camp training and their experiences during the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War.

While the film is regarded as one of the greatest war films made, one aspect that makes it stand out is Lee Ermey's addition as the drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. Ermey was initially supposed to be a technical advisor but managed to wow Kubrick with his ability to play the drill sergeant role and the deplorable insults he could come up with on the spot.

Brad Pitt Has Been A Soldier Throughout The Centuries

Brad Pitt is a man of many talents, with an incredible acting range that allows him to play a goofy personal trainer in one film to an eager and short-fused detective in another. He's also impressive in the war movies that he's been involved in.

Some of the most notable include him as the legendary historical figure Achilles in 2004's Troy, a battle-hardened U.S. Army Staff Sergeant in 2014's Fury, and the ringleader of a ragtag military group in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds.

<p>Russell Crowe is a New Zealand actor that came to international attention after starring as the Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the historical epic period piece <i>Gladiator. </i></p> <p>Although he has also had impressive performances outside of the war genre, such as <i>A Beautiful Mind, The Insider, American Gangster, </i>and others, some of his other battle-heavy films include <i>Master and Commander, Far Side of the World, Robin Hood, </i>and <i>Les Miserables. </i>For his impressive performance in <i>Gladiator, </i>he took home the Academy Award for Best Actor. </p>

Russell Crowe Is A Force To Be Reckoned With When He's In Combat

Russell Crowe is a New Zealand actor that came to international attention after starring as the Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the historical epic period piece Gladiator.

Although he has also had impressive performances outside of the war genre, such as A Beautiful Mind, The Insider, American Gangster, and others, some of his other battle-heavy films include Master and Commander, Far Side of the World, Robin Hood, and Les Miserables. For his impressive performance in Gladiator, he took home the Academy Award for Best Actor.

<p>During his career, George Campbell was known for his performances both on the stage and in front of the camera. Some of his notable performances in films were <i>Anatomy of a Murder, Dr. Strangelove, </i>and <i>A Christmas Carol, </i>although many people remember him as the title character in <i>Patton.</i></p> <p>Here, he plays the highly decorated United States military general George S. Patton during his exploits in World War II. Unbelievably, Scott won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Patton but declined to accept the award. </p>

George C. Scott Was General Patton Reborn In Patton

During his career, George Campbell was known for his performances both on the stage and in front of the camera. Some of his notable performances in films were Anatomy of a Murder, Dr. Strangelove, and A Christmas Carol, although many people remember him as the title character in Patton.

Here, he plays the highly decorated United States military general George S. Patton during his exploits in World War II. Unbelievably, Scott won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Patton but declined to accept the award.

<p>Francis Ford Coppola's <i>Apocalypse </i>now has an ensemble cast including Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Sam Bottoms, Dennis Hopper, and even Harrison Ford makes an appearance. Another well-known actor that makes an appearance is Robert Duvall, who plays Lieutenant Colonel William Kilgore, a lover of surfing with a care-free, almost fun attitude towards war. </p> <p>Although he is only in one part of the film, he provides some dark comic relief and gifted us with the iconic line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." </p>

Robert DuVall Knows "Charlie Don't Surf" In Apocalypse Now

Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse now has an ensemble cast including Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Sam Bottoms, Dennis Hopper, and even Harrison Ford makes an appearance. Another well-known actor that makes an appearance is Robert Duvall, who plays Lieutenant Colonel William Kilgore, a lover of surfing with a care-free, almost fun attitude towards war.

Although he is only in one part of the film, he provides some dark comic relief and gifted us with the iconic line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

<p>Over the course of Bradley Cooper's career, he has been nominated for eight Academy Awards and has won two Grammy Awards and a BAFTA Award. With his films grossing more th<i>a</i>n $11 billion worldwide, he ranks among the world's highest-paid actors. Successful in both comedy and drama, he tried something different with the biographical war film <i>American Sniper. </i></p> <p>In the movie, Cooper portrays sniper Chris Kyle, who became the deadliest sniper in American history with 255 kills from four tours during the Iraq War. The film went on to become the highest-grossing war film of all time. </p>

Bradley Cooper Bulked Up For American Sniper

Over the course of Bradley Cooper's career, he has been nominated for eight Academy Awards and has won two Grammy Awards and a BAFTA Award. With his films grossing more th a n $11 billion worldwide, he ranks among the world's highest-paid actors. Successful in both comedy and drama, he tried something different with the biographical war film American Sniper.

In the movie, Cooper portrays sniper Chris Kyle, who became the deadliest sniper in American history with 255 kills from four tours during the Iraq War. The film went on to become the highest-grossing war film of all time.

<p>Mel Gibson's 2016 film, <i>Hacksaw Ridge, </i>tells the true story of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor. Andrew Garfield portrays Doss, who refuses to use a weapon of any kind, serving as a combat medic in the Battle of Okinawa during World War II. </p> <p>For his performance, Garfield was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards, as well as at the Golden Globes. Garfield won Best Actor at the AACTA Awards. </p>

Andrew Garfield Just Wants "One More" In Hacksaw Ridge

Mel Gibson's 2016 film, Hacksaw Ridge, tells the true story of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor. Andrew Garfield portrays Doss, who refuses to use a weapon of any kind, serving as a combat medic in the Battle of Okinawa during World War II.

For his performance, Garfield was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards, as well as at the Golden Globes. Garfield won Best Actor at the AACTA Awards.

<p>Although young actor Timothée Hal Chalamet has become a Hollywood heartthrob for his boyish looks and success in films such as <i>Call Me by Your Name, Beautiful Boy</i>, and others, he stepped up to take on the role of King Henry V in Netflix's 2019 <i>The King. </i></p> <p>The film is based on several of William Shakespeare's plays about the historical king, following Henry as he ascends the throne after his father's death and the politics and wars he must deal with that were his father's making. </p>

Timothée Chalamet On An Unprecedented Role In The King

Although young actor Timothée Hal Chalamet has become a Hollywood heartthrob for his boyish looks and success in films such as Call Me by Your Name, Beautiful Boy , and others, he stepped up to take on the role of King Henry V in Netflix's 2019 The King.

The film is based on several of William Shakespeare's plays about the historical king, following Henry as he ascends the throne after his father's death and the politics and wars he must deal with that were his father's making.

<p>Although Mark Wahlberg has proven his talent in countless roles across genres, there's little doubt that he's one of the greatest action movie stars of all time. This made him perfect for the high-intensity war film <i>Lone Survivor. </i></p> <p>In the film, Wahlberg plays Petty Officer First Class Marcus Luttrell and follows the true story of a four-man surveillance team tasked to track down the Taliban leader Ahmad Shah, with the mission going south. Wahlberg was the first actor to sign on for the project.</p>

Mark Whalberg Barely Makes It Out Alive In Lone Survivor

Although Mark Wahlberg has proven his talent in countless roles across genres, there's little doubt that he's one of the greatest action movie stars of all time. This made him perfect for the high-intensity war film Lone Survivor.

In the film, Wahlberg plays Petty Officer First Class Marcus Luttrell and follows the true story of a four-man surveillance team tasked to track down the Taliban leader Ahmad Shah, with the mission going south. Wahlberg was the first actor to sign on for the project.

<p>Released in 2018, <i>Outlaw King </i>is a historical film about Robert the Bruce, the Scottish King who lived during the 14th century and led a war against England for Scotland's freedom. </p> <p>The movie stars Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce and takes place over three years of Robert's life, ending in the climactic Battle of Loudoun Hill, in which the Scottish defeated a larger English army. This was the first time that audiences saw Chris Pine swinging a sword and it certainly didn't disappoint. </p>

Chris Pine Lead His Countrymen In Outlaw King

Released in 2018, Outlaw King is a historical film about Robert the Bruce, the Scottish King who lived during the 14th century and led a war against England for Scotland's freedom.

The movie stars Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce and takes place over three years of Robert's life, ending in the climactic Battle of Loudoun Hill, in which the Scottish defeated a larger English army. This was the first time that audiences saw Chris Pine swinging a sword and it certainly didn't disappoint.

<p>Directed by Ridley Scott and released in 2005, <i>Kingdom of Heaven </i>is a historical film that takes place during the Crusades of the 12th Century. Orlando Bloom stars as Balian de Ibelin, a French blacksmith that goes to the Holy land and ends up in command of the defense of Jerusalem from the Muslim Sultan, Saladin. </p> <p>Although viewers had seen Orlando Bloom as a fighter in fantasy films such as <i>The Pirates of the Caribbean </i>franchise, <i>Troy,</i> or <i>The Lord of the Rings </i>trilogy, we see a different performance from Bloom in this film. </p>

Orlando Bloom Plays A Fictionalized Version Of The Crusader Balian de Ibelin In Kingdom Of Heaven

Directed by Ridley Scott and released in 2005, Kingdom of Heaven is a historical film that takes place during the Crusades of the 12th Century. Orlando Bloom stars as Balian de Ibelin, a French blacksmith that goes to the Holy land and ends up in command of the defense of Jerusalem from the Muslim Sultan, Saladin.

Although viewers had seen Orlando Bloom as a fighter in fantasy films such as The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Troy, or The Lord of the Rings trilogy, we see a different performance from Bloom in this film.

<p>Known for performing his own stunts and his acting capabilities across a span of different genres, Tom Cruise has also been involved in a few war films which include movies such as <i>Born on the Fourth of July, Valkyrie, </i>and <i>The Last Samurai. </i></p> <p>For his performance in the biographical war drama <i>Born on the Fourth of July, </i>Cruise was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards, and the movie was the tenth highest-grossing film of 1989. </p>

Tom Cruise Has A Fair Share Of War Movie Under His Belt

Known for performing his own stunts and his acting capabilities across a span of different genres, Tom Cruise has also been involved in a few war films which include movies such as Born on the Fourth of July, Valkyrie, and The Last Samurai.

For his performance in the biographical war drama Born on the Fourth of July, Cruise was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards, and the movie was the tenth highest-grossing film of 1989.

<p>One of the most successful and well-known actors alive, Robert De Niro has won two Academy Awards a Golden Globe Award, the Cecil D. Demille Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award. </p> <p>Although he is known for working closely with Martin Scorcese in films that fall into the gangster genre, in 1978, he starred in the epic war drama <i>The Deer Hunter </i>as SSG Michael "Mike" Vronsky. De Niro was a last-minute replacement in the role and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. </p> <p><b><a href="https://www.pastfactory.com/history/the-real-truth-behind-the-viking-culture/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Read More: The Real Truth Behind The Viking Culture</a></b></p>

Robert De Niro Gives A Gut-Wrenching Performance In The Deer Hunter

One of the most successful and well-known actors alive, Robert De Niro has won two Academy Awards a Golden Globe Award, the Cecil D. Demille Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award.

Although he is known for working closely with Martin Scorcese in films that fall into the gangster genre, in 1978, he starred in the epic war drama The Deer Hunter as SSG Michael "Mike" Vronsky. De Niro was a last-minute replacement in the role and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.

Read More: The Real Truth Behind The Viking Culture

More for You

Chocolate Recall Map Shows Nine States Impacted by Health Warning

A Dassault Falcon at Edinburgh Airport. The cyber attack is believed to be the first GPS jam on a commercial flight

GPS jammed on commercial flight over Atlantic for the first time

If you always use these 6 phrases, you're mentally stronger than most

Keep Rats Away Naturally With A Handy Item Sitting Around The House

Honda Filmed This Fantastic Documentary Back In 1962 And You Need To See It

I lost 42 pounds with Ozempic, but was shaken by the drug's psychological toll

Hiring Crisis of 2024: 17 Industries Struggling to Find Skilled Workers

Help Wanted: 17 Industries That Can Not Find Enough Qualified Workers

Stephen King's Election Comment Gains Momentum

What It Was Like To Eat At The First Steakhouse

5 Great Things to do in Nashville (Besides Party)

Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese Top Latest WNBA Rookie Power Rankings

Caitlin Clark's Eye-Opening Realization After Indiana Fever's Milestone

Tech: What The Strange Knob On Your Computer Cable Is For

"It's Magic": These 15 Hacks Will Keep Your Home Cool Without Needing Air Conditioning

Why Don't Trucks Have Dual Gas Tanks Anymore?

What is quishing? US Postal Inspection Service warns of new scam used to commit identity fraud

The best rock album in music history is not by The Beatles, according to fans. See the top 100.

Oakley mogul sells $210 million Malibu mansion to a mystery buyer

This homemade electrolyte drink should quench your thirst.

2 easy homemade electrolyte drinks that actually work

Nuclear Terrorism 'Risks Are High,' Researchers Warn

Brittney Griner Reveals Two-Word Message On WNBA Return

Brittney Griner's Concert Appearance With Megan Thee Stallion Is Turning Heads

Screen Rant

15 best movies like jason bourne.

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

10 Things Only Die-Hard Fans Know About The Jason Bourne Movies

Every martial art style jason bourne uses in the bourne movies, jason bourne's origin story explained.

Bourne's world blends implausible action with realism, sharp cynicism, and a focus on modern spy tech.
Intelligent scripts and well-developed characters are essential for movies like Jason Bourne.
The best movies like Jason Bourne blend intriguing characters with intense, gritty fight scenes.

While Matt Damon's action hero was able to establish himself as a unique protagonist in the spy genre, there are other movies like Jason Bourne movies that capture the same thrilling and intelligent fee l. There have been four Jason Bourne movies, including a spinoff, The Bourne Legacy , and the short-lived TV show Treadstone. While these entries range in quality, the franchise's hallmarks have been established with a grounded and visceral examination of the modern spy world paired with intense action sequences courtesy of the titular hero whose strategic thinking is matched by his fighting skills.

Bourne’s world balanced the implausible with realism, its technology felt real, and its cynicism was sharp and intriguing. To be counted as one of the best movies like Jason Bourne , a film needs more than just well-choreographed martial arts and must offer something for fans of espionage and engaging dialogue to chew on. Whether they're playing super spies or complex criminals, many actors have found ways to create intelligent and deadly characters who would work well with Jason Bourne or would be a formidable match for him.

How To Watch The Jason Bourne Movies In Order (Chronologically & By Release Date)

The Jason Bourne movie franchise consists of five feature films, and thankfully, the chronological order of them is pretty straightforward.

15 Hanna (2011)

A young girl fights for her freedom from the cia, hanna (2011).

*Availability in US

Not available

While Jason Bourne is a highly trained secret agent who saw his own country betray him, Hanna is a story about a young woman at the start of her training . Directed by Joe Wright ( Pride and Prejudice ), Saoirse Ronan stars as Hanna Heller, a 15-year-old whose father lives with her in rural northern Finland. They are in hiding because the CIA wants her dad killed for leaving them, which makes his story very similar to that of Bourne. However, this is more than a country turning its back on its own agents.

David Farr created a Hanna spinoff series for Prime Video.

In Hanna , it is the daughter who takes up the fight. The CIA wants her as a new agent, and they won't take no for an answer. Just like in the Jason Bourne movies, Hanna has legitimate fighting skills and can eliminate hoards of other trained agents. Both also have some strong women in the roles of the government heads who want to bring them in (Joan Allen in Bourne and Cate Blanchett in Hanna ). Hanna was positively reviewed by critics and also spawned a television show on Prime Video.

14 Shooter (2007)

A u.s. marine sniper is framed for murder.

Antoine Fuqua ( Training Day ) created his own action thriller based on a soldier that the American government turned on in Shooter . In this movie, Mark Wahlberg stars as Bob Lee Swagger, a former Marine sniper who retires from active duty after a mission goes wrong and results in the death of a CIA officer. However, when he is enlisted to help stop a potential presidential assassination attempt, things go wrong because it is a setup. Bob is framed for assassinating Ethiopian Archbishop Desmond Mutumbo.

Ryan Phillippe stars in a TV version of Shooter .

This leads the U.S. government to set up a manhunt to bring down the sniper. Like in the Jason Bourne movies, Bob Lee Swagger has a skill set that puts him on a level above his hunters, and he turns the tables quickly. It also plays the same game as the Bourne movies, with the sniper figuring out a way to put the men who betrayed him in a spot where he can exact his revenge and clear his name in the end.

13 Three Days Of The Condor

A cia analyst survives a massacre in his department, three days of the condor (1975).

The one thing that Jason Bourne had going for him was that he was a highly trained assassin, and that put him in a unique spot to defend himself and kill all the trained mercenaries sent after him. That was not what happened in Three Days of the Condor , although the stories remain similar. In this Sydney Pollack movie, Robert Redford stars as a CIA analyst who leaves to get lunch for his co-workers, only to come back and find that a group of armed men entered and killed everyone there.

Joe has to then run for his life, and when he calls the CIA for help, they show up and attempt to kill him. Joe realizes that the CIA ordered the assassination of one of their own offices, and then they frame Joe for the murders. When the CIA head who tried to kill him is assassinated, Joe realizes no one is safe. Three Days of the Condor is a blueprint for espionage movies, and having Joe as an analyst and not a trained killer makes it even scarier. However, the twists and turns are very reminiscent of the Bourne movies.

12 Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

Tom clancy's famous spy embarks on his first mission in russia, jack ryan: shadow recruit.

Chris Pine became the fourth actor to play Jack Ryan on the big screen in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit . Younger and even more inexperienced than previous iterations of the Tom Clancy hero, Pine's Jack Ryan certainly shares far more of Bourne's brains than he does his brawn , but that doesn't mean that Shadow Recruit shuns action set-pieces. Sent to Russia to spy on a ruthless villain (Kenneth Branagh), Ryan fights more with his words than his fists in the movie.

However, Pine's verbal sparring matches with Branagh, who also directed the film, are electrifying, and it all builds to an explosive finale. Ryan has always been a more human protagonist in the spy genre, and this origin story cements that. The movie shows that Jack Ryan is a lot like Jason Bourne, even if the two men take care of their problems differently. All the Jack Ryan movies compare well with Jason Bourne movies, though this one shares more similarities with The Bourne Identity .

11 Salt (2010)

A cia operative is accused of being a russian mole.

Though it was originally envisaged as a Tom Cruise vehicle (via The Los Angeles Times ), Angelina Jolie brought all of her star power to the lead role of Salt and made it her own. Like Matt Damon's performance in the Bourne movies, she injected a relatively conventional part of a mysterious superspy figure with an unconventional level of emotion mixed in with tenacious ingenuity .

The plot follows a CIA agent accused of being a hidden Russian sleeper agent. Up against all that law enforcement and the intelligence community can throw at her, Evelyn Salt has to think on her feet as Bourne does and proves herself a worthy comparison. Just like the Jason Bourne movies, Salt is on her own against the U.S. intelligence agencies, and just like Bourne, she can stand up to entire legions of agents and win any fight. Though plans for a Salt 2 fell through, the first movie remains an underrated gem.

10 Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

Ethan hunt and his team attempt to stop a nuclear attack, mission: impossible - fallout.

The sixth installment in the long-running Mission: Impossible franchise surpassed its predecessors in many areas, the most famous of which was its use of stunts to make its impossibly action-packed world seem real. Facing the remaining villains left over from the rogue international spy ring that Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt and his team broke up in the previous movie, the "Impossible Mission Force" races to stop a doomsday plot involving stolen plutonium.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout adds Henry Cavill to the ever-expanding roster of super spies that the franchise has created and, like the Jason Bourne movies, has wowed critics alike with dazzling choreography and death-defying chases . The movies also share similarities when it comes to not trusting anyone, not even those who are working for the U.S. government. In this case, Ethan Hunt realizes that the CIA assassin sent to help him is working against his team, which was just the start of the United States turning on Hunt.

There may not be any more movies on the horizon for the amnesiac assassin but the sometimes chaotic production made for some interesting trivia.

9 Atomic Blonde (2017)

An mi6 agent investigates the murder of a fellow agent in cold war berlin, atomic blonde.

Charlize Theron stars as an uncompromising spy in this Cold War action-thriller adapted from the graphic novel The Coldest City by director David Leitch, who was one of the creative forces behind the original John Wick movie starring Keanu Reeves. Theron's character, Lorraine Broughton, gives Bourne a run for his money with her bare-knuckle brutality and precision , making for some of the most entertaining fight sequences of recent years.

Atomic Blonde is as stylized on the screen as its origins on the page, but the brutalist architecture of the late Soviet era evokes the more grounded feel of the Jason Bourne movies. This isn't much like the Bourne movies regarding the story of the character's history. Instead, fans should watch this movie if they love the down-and-dirty fight scenes in the Bourne franchise because Atomic Blonde holds nothing back, and Charlize Theron proves to be a perfect action hero.

8 Breach (2007)

The true spy story of an fbi data breach.

Reality is rarely as appealing as fiction, but a few incredible true stories from the spy world make it into thriller movies. Breach dramatizes the figures and events at the heart of the biggest and most famous data breach in US intelligence history, where FBI agent Robert Hanssen sold secrets to Russia for decades before he was caught. Though Breach shares none of the Jason Bourne movies' focus on action, its unromantic and tangible view of the intelligence world feels similar to Bourne movies.

Leading the way is Chris Cooper's performance in the role of Hanssen. The actor also played Treadstone's original head, Alexander Conklin, in The Bourne Identity . Besides the shared actor from the movies, this is an excellent film for fans of espionage, mainly because there are very few people anyone can trust, even at the highest levels of the government. Jason Bourne realized the treachery went to the top of the chain, and that proves to be the case in Breach as well.

7 Body Of Lies (2008)

Leonardo dicaprio plays a cia operative caught in a complex spy game in jordan, body of lies (2008).

Adapted from David Ignatius's novel of the same name, Body of Lies is more of a political thriller than an action thriller like the Jason Bourne movies. Its story is mainly concerned with contemplating the United States’ relationship with the Middle East. The screenplay revolves around different approaches to stopping a terrorist as a CIA operative (Leonardo DiCaprio) is caught between his handler (Russell Crowe) and the local government intelligence in Jordan.

William Monohan's screenplay shares similarities to the Jason Bourne franchise's passionate critiques of modern counter-terrorist policies. At the same time , director Ridley Scott keeps short and sharp bursts of action that are gritty and grounded. While not as action packed, the two movies share a determined hero, with DiCaprio's Roger Ferris very similar to Jason Bourne as someone who won't stop until he discovers the truth and ends things, no matter who he finds at the top.

Jason Bourne is an extremely skilled fighter in the Bourne movies - we take a look at the different martial arts forms he shows skill in.

6 Jack Reacher (2012)

Tom cruise plays the determined military cop investigating a conspiracy, jack reacher.

Like James Bond, Jason Bourne was a popular literary hero before becoming a movie franchise. Another similar character from the world of thriller novels to recently make the jump to film and TV is Jack Reacher. The former soldier turned drifter and unlicensed investigator shares Bourne's military skills and devotion to living completely off the grid despite being a magnet for trouble.

The film is based on the Lee Child novel One Shot, which sees Reacher uncover a sinister organization operating from the shadows in Pittsburgh. While lead star Tom Cruise is physically different from how Reacher is described in the novels, he captures the character's intimidating nature. Like Bourne, Reacher is an endlessly determined hero with hard-hitting fighting skills and military savvy and can take down an entire legion of enemies with few problems. The fight scenes compare well between the two franchises.

5 The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

A suburban mother regains her memory as a highly-trained assassin, the long kiss goodnight (1996).

Though screenwriter Shane Black makes this story about a highly-trained government killer with amnesia a lot more comedic than espionage thriller movies like The Bourne Identity , it's still an action-packed detective story that centers around a government conspiracy. In this case, Geena Davis leads the movie as a mild-mannered school teacher who discovers that she's really an elite CIA assassin and can trust no one.

This makes its plot almost identical to The Bourne Identity , with the deadly plot that led to her memory loss as the biggest mystery. Both Samantha and Jason washed up ashore with no memories of who they were. The one difference is that Samantha was pregnant and started a domestic life, taking longer to begin her journey to discovery. Along with similar plot details, actor Brian Cox, who appeared in the first two Bourne movies as CIA Deputy Director Ward Abbott, also has a shadowy role here.

4 The Accountant (2016)

An accountant who cleans companies' books is lured into a conspiracy, the accountant.

Ben Affleck has famously stepped into the role of a violent crime-fighting superhero several times in the past. However, his turn in The Accountant took this concept and played it more similar to the Jason Bourne movies. Affleck stars in the thriller as a man with high-functioning autism who masquerades as a dreary accountant while secretly getting himself involved in the illegal activities of some of the shadiest criminals on the planet.

The methodical precision of Affleck's character in the fight scenes and his Hollywood star power make it a nice companion piece to Damon's Bourne movies. With The Accountant 2 confirmed , the 2016 movie will soon be the first franchise entry that could rival Jason Bourne's. Connecting Jason Bourne movies and The Accountant is that Matt Damon serves as a producer alongside his best friend, Affleck, possibly ensuring that more of the Bourne legacy will keep seeping into the new franchise.

Jason Bourne may not know who he is or what he has done, but viewers can read the Bourne franchise antihero's tragic backstory before a rewatch.

3 Skyfall (2012)

James bond faces off with a vengeful former agent.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Eon Productions' run of James Bond movies , Daniel Craig's third 007 film opted to do things a little differently. The story delves into Bond’s past as he protects M (Judi Dench) from a vengeful former agent (Javier Bardem). Both Bond and Mission: Impossible had a knee-jerk reaction to the success of the Jason Bourne movies in 2006, adopting darker tones and featuring grittier fight sequences . Without Bourne, Bond might have never grown so gritty.

However, despite keeping some of the fighting styles from the Jason Bourne influence, Skyfall comes off as a much more mature and considered film than its predecessors and states Bond's place within the broader makeup of spy movies more confidently. This is also a movie that shows, more than almost any other Craig Bond movie, the hero when he is by himself with overwhelming odds against him. This is what Bond became, thanks to Jason Bourne's influence.

2 Ronin (1998)

A group of mercenaries assemble to secure a mysterious package.

Like the Jason Bourne movies, Ronin is famed among crime thrillers for bringing a distinctly American flavor to a European thriller, not least in its massive car chase sequence, which has generally been considered to be one of the greatest of all time since its release and even being compared to The French Connection . The film follows a group of mercenaries who are in pursuit of a mysterious briefcase.

... a nuanced yet exciting approach to action thrillers Jason Bourne movies excel at.

Twists and turns in the story, with double-crosses and conflicting interests abounding, help to make the film feel epic in scale despite the stakes always being somewhat vague. It is a nuanced yet exciting approach to action thrillers Jason Bourne movies excel at. Unlike Jason Bourne, who was a black op operative for the U.S. government, betrayed by his own country, Ronin is about former special ops soldiers teaming up to steal a briefcase. However, the fight scenes and action beats match up well.

1 Patriot Games (1992)

Jack ryan takes on an irish terrorist looking for revenge.

The Jack Ryan franchise is one of the few that both predates Bourne and appeals to his fans. Ryan has always been one of the more convincing CIA agents on screen. He is an analyst involved in a more familiar political landscape rather than fictional plots, but the slick approach results in an interesting balance, which is very rewarding. Harrison Ford only starred as the character in two movies but has so far had the longest run in films.

His first outing as the character saw him foil a terrorist plot in London, making him a target and bringing the franchise's sharp eye for political intrigue to many of the discussions that movies like Jason Bourne do. The big difference here is that Jack Ryan remained working for the U.S. government and is a national hero, while Bourne was betrayed and is on the run from his own government. However, Tom Clancy's espionage novels will always play well alongside the Bourne franchise.

'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning' Director Christopher McQuarrie Ranks Tom Cruise's Most "Terrifying" Stunts

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

This Tom Cruise Movie Missed the Target at the Box Office — But Its Hitting the Bullseye on Netflix

The 10 best tom holland spider-man quotes, ranked, warner bros. keeps asking for a sequel to this tom cruise sci-fi action movie.

Director Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise are a power duo in cinema, no doubt. Between collaborating together on last year’s blockbuster sequel, Top Gun: Maverick , and buzz about working on the first film to shoot in space , Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is just one of their many cinematic ambitions. While it may not be in space, McQuarrie’s new Mission movie does provide Cruise with ample opportunity to execute some more gnarly stunts, and Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke with the filmmaker to find out what exactly that planning process looks like.

Dead Reckoning Part One takes IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) to beautiful locations on a deadly new mission to obtain a powerful weapon before it can fall into the wrong hands. This time, Hunt will have to confront the possibility that the mission comes before everything else — even those closest to him. The movie also stars Hayley Atwell , Rebecca Ferguson , Shea Whigham , Esai Morales , Simon Pegg , Cary Elwes , and more.

While the previous Mission: Impossible installments featured Cruise performing his own death-defying stunts , we were curious which ones ranked highest on McQuarrie’s list, as far as nerves go. In their one-on-one, which you can watch or read below, the filmmaker explains what the discussion around these stunts looks like during production, the precautions taken, and why none of them are without risk. We also learn which stunt, since helming Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation , gave McQuarrie the most grief and why. Despite Part One seeing Cruise riding a motorcycle off the side of a cliff and freefalling through the air, McQuarrie also tells us that there will be sequences in Part Two that will be “beyond anything” we’ve seen to this point.

COLLIDER: I really want to start with a sincere congratulations. I loved the movie. I wish I could watch Part Two, like, tomorrow.

CHRISTOPHER MCQUARRIE: Me too. [Laughs]

So you and Tom [Cruise], in the Mission: Impossible movies, have done incredible stunts and we all know Tom does these things, they're incredibly difficult, they're risking his life. In terms of all the stunts that you've worked with Tom on, how would you rank the difficulty of the stunts for the Missions and how nervous you were watching Tom do them?

MCQUARRIE: They all have their own risks, and it's not always what you perceive the risk to be. For example, with the A400, the concern was less that Tom would fall off the plane than he would be hit by a rock on the runway or a bird when we were in mid-air. So there's all of these different factors and variables that you're constantly thinking about that could go wrong outside of all the variables that you've eliminated. The more variables, the scarier the stunt. I think that's kind of, to me, what makes it terrifying is how many different ways Tom could be killed doing the stunt, but they're all knowns. They're all things that you've thought about and can't control.

Going off that ramp, he was entering the unknown. We had eliminated everything we possibly could. We just didn't know what would actually happen when he did it because we could, in no way, shape or form, test or replicate those conditions anywhere else. So when he went off that ramp, we didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know if the bike would get away from him, we didn't know if a crosswind would tangle him up, and we didn't know if the drone would hit him based on the environment that we were in. So once we called “action,” you had to hold your breath until the parachute opened. That was pretty terrifying.

I do want to bring in all the Missions you've worked on. What I'm curious about is how would you rank all the set pieces that you've worked on. What are your top three or top five in terms of level of difficulty and how nervous you are before Tom did them?

MCQUARRIE: I would say they probably go in chronological order. Only because when we were doing Rogue Nation and we were doing the A400, it was really my first time directing anything like that. It was obviously Tom's first time doing anything like that. And everything you are seeing, every movie you're watching, is Tom and I applying our knowledge from the previous movies to the next one and pushing it a little bit further. So the motorcycle jump in this film, for example, is taking all of the motorcycle stunts from Rogue Nation , taking the BASE jumping from Fallout , and applying them to the same stunt. They're all just, in order of magnitude, scarier. If you just follow them in order, each one is scarier for me and more of an unknown because we're just pushing ourselves that much further. And I can tell you there's stuff coming in [ Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two ] that is beyond anything we've done.

For me personally, the scariest thing we ever did was the helicopter chase in Fallout , for the simple fact that I had to be in a helicopter chasing after Tom [laughs]. So there's the added factor of my own life [being] at risk. When you're watching Tom go off the bike ramp, I'm there, I'm definitely watching my life flash before my eyes as well as his, but I also know in the event of anything terrible, I'm still going to be there. So I would have to say probably number one scariest, most stressful was the helicopter chase in Fallout just because I was there.

Tom risks his life, for real, making these movies.

MCQUARRIE: Yes.

Have you guys ever had a conversation or talked about…god forbid?

MCQUARRIE: That's definitely a specter in every single one of those conversations, but that's a reality in simple things. In Jack Reacher , a shot where Rosamund Pike was backing out of a parking spot with a camera over her shoulder, and revealing Tom standing in front of her, she went to drive away. That's a very dangerous stunt. That's an extremely dangerous stunt. Because Rosamund Pike, who is not an experienced stunt driver, could make one simple mistake, hit the accelerator instead of the gas, and that's lights out. So we treat everything the exact same way. In the stunt where he broke his ankle in Fallout , jumping from building to building, there are a million variables where something could go wrong. We have an expression we repeat all the time, which is, “Don't be careful, be competent.” You can't make these movies without taking risks and without doing extremely dangerous things. But you could be very, very, very smart and very, very considered about the way you do it.

The other thing that's really critical whenever we're doing it is I deputize the crew down to camera operators, focus pullers, anyone can yell, “cut.” If you see something wrong, you can stop the movie, it's not worth doing. And we don't want a culture where people are thinking, “I felt something was wrong, but I didn't think it was my place to say.” So there's a huge bubble that everybody is participating in, that everybody is aware of, just to make those things safer. But yeah, we think about that all the time, but you can't factor it into your planning. It's that thing of, I was watching a video recently where someone was saying, “If you're skiing through the woods and you're saying, ‘don't hit the trees, don't hit the trees,’ all you're thinking about is the trees.” You really have to be thinking, “Stay on the trail, stay on the trail,” and that's what we do. It's just, how do you do it safely? Just safety, safety, safety.

You know I like talking about editing and runtimes and all that stuff, so I'll just bring it in now. The movie’s like 2.5 hours, maybe a few minutes over. Did you have a much longer cut?

MCQUARRIE: Oh, yes. Yes, very, very long, but that's not unusual. I think probably every movie I've done has been– Your first assembly is close to three hours.

I don't even want you to say the assembly because everyone thinks that's the real running time. What was your first director's cut that you were like, “Oh, this is really good, and I'm showing the studio?”

MCQUARRIE: I never had that. With every cut, we knew it could be better, we knew it could be tighter. When we finally screened it for the last test audience and were happy with the result, we were about two minutes longer than we are now, and we walked away from it. The studio was very happy, the scores were great, but we still knew we had issues. We knew we had issues with pace and length, and we went back into the editing room, reconfigured the first act, and ended up taking two minutes out of the movie, which was critical. And it can literally be that close. The difference in two minutes can make the difference between the movie feeling long or feeling just right.

Fallout , we had a cut of the movie that was five minutes shorter but scored lower. It was cut too tight, it couldn't breathe. We're just absolutely microscopic and surgical about it in terms of how we get there. But I'd say where the movie started to work for me– Because what you're seeing is the director's cut. I mean, that's really how we look at it. There's not some extended version of the movie that I would show you, thinking it was an improvement on it. Where we got into a place where I was approaching satisfaction, it's the difference of a couple of minutes.

When Part Two is eventually done, do you want people to watch Part One and Part Two in one sitting, or will you always want people to take a break after the first one, digest, and come back?

MCQUARRIE: Ideally, I will have made two movies that you can watch on their own or together. We never want you to have to check out of the movie you're in to remember another movie. We did the same thing with Top Gun: Maverick . We've done it with all of the Missions that we've done. We want to keep you immersed in the movie. That's a big red line for us.

How did you decide where to end the movie in Part One, and was it ever going to be something else?

MCQUARRIE: When the movie was so long, and we were too close to it, we couldn't figure out how to cut it down further. We talked about breaking the movie up, and the problem was there was just no place for the movie to end. The story was so interconnected. That was the only time we really discussed any other kind of ending, and that’s just, frankly, exhaustion and not wanting to confront the reality of, “We still have work to do.” The movie always ended where it did, we just didn't know what the ending exactly was. It was really critical for us that when you watch this movie as part of a two-parter, you feel satisfied at the end of Part One, that it's not just suddenly ending, and, “We'll see you later!” It had to feel like a complete movie. It had to be a movie that if Part Two didn't exist, or we hadn't figured out what Part Two was, or you had to wait two years to see the next one, you would have been satisfied with this one, I think. That's what we did.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One freefalls into theaters on July 12. Can’t believe Tom Cruise would go to such lengths? Check out Collider’s interview with him on the red carpet in Rome below.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

IMAGES

Top Gun: Maverick
Sniper (1993)
Tom Cruise becomes the Sniper Master
Imagini Sniper (1993)
Affiche du film Snipers, tireurs d'élite

VIDEO

Tom cruise movie
Mark wahlberg, shooter movie sniper full movie, mp4,best English action movie
Crazy Fight Scene #movie #shorts #hollywood #shortsviral
Top 10 Sniper Movies That Will Make Your Blood Run Cold #actionmovies #movies #bestmovies #sniper
This Is The Deadliest Sniper Of The 21st Century, He's Hit Over
Tom Cruise's Most Dangerous Stunt Ever 😮😮😮 #tomcruise

COMMENTS

Jack Reacher (2012)
Jack Reacher: Directed by Christopher McQuarrie. With Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins, David Oyelowo. A homicide investigator digs deeper into a case involving a trained military sniper responsible for a mass shooting.
Jack Reacher (2012)
A homicide investigator digs deeper into a case involving a trained military sniper responsible for a mass shooting. In an innocent heartland city, five are shot dead by an expert sniper. The police quickly identify and arrest the culprit, and build a slam-dunk case. But instead of confessing, the accused man writes the words, "Get Jack Reacher ...
Jack Reacher (film)
Jack Reacher is a 2012 American action thriller film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, starring Tom Cruise and based on Lee Child's 2005 novel One Shot.Cruise portrays the title character and the supporting cast features Rosamund Pike, Werner Herzog, Robert Duvall, David Oyelowo, Richard Jenkins, and Jai Courtney.The film focuses on a normally non-contactable former US Army Major ...
Edge of Tomorrow
Edge of Tomorrow is a 2014 American science fiction action film directed by Doug Liman and written by Christopher McQuarrie and the writing team of Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, loosely based on the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.Starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, the film takes place in a future where most of Europe is occupied by an alien race.
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back: Directed by Edward Zwick. With Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, Aldis Hodge, Danika Yarosh. Jack Reacher must uncover the truth behind a major government conspiracy in order to clear his name while on the run as a fugitive from the law.
Jack Reacher
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; Reacher ...
Jack Reacher Official Trailer #2 (2012)
Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6hSubscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUnJack Reacher Official Trailer #2 (2012) - Tom Cruise Movie HDSix sho...
Jack Reacher Trailer 2012 Tom Cruise Movie
Jack Reacher Trailer 2012 - Official movie teaser in HD - starring Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Robert Duvall - directed by Christopher McQuarrie - a homicide ...
The Ending Of Jack Reacher Explained
In the 2012 film "Jack Reacher," a horrible crime is committed in Pittsburgh: five people are coldly executed by a sniper. The case seems open and shut when the police discover a man named James ...
Watch Jack Reacher
Jack Reacher. Investigator Jack Reacher leaps off the pages of Lee Child's novel and onto the big screen in this thriller. When a horrible crime is committed, all evidence points to the suspect in custody who offers up a single note in defense: "Get Jack Reacher!". 32,967 IMDb 7.0 2 h 10 min 2012. X-Ray HDR UHD PG-13.
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is a 2016 American action-thriller film directed by Edward Zwick, written by Zwick, Richard Wenk, and Marshall Herskovitz, and based on the 2013 novel Never Go Back by Lee Child.A sequel to the 2012 film Jack Reacher, the film stars Tom Cruise and Cobie Smulders, with the supporting cast featuring Patrick Heusinger, Aldis Hodge, Danika Yarosh, Holt McCallany, and ...
Tom Cruise in 'Jack Reacher,' Based on a Lee Child Book
Tom Cruise is the familiar archetype title character in "Jack Reacher," dispensing righteous violence and hard-boiled aphorisms. ... where a sniper has just shot down five innocent people ...
Jack Reacher Movie CLIP
Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6hSubscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUnLike us on FACEBOOK: http://goo.gl/dHs73Follow us on TWITTER: http:/...
Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation
PG-13 Released Jul 31, 2015 2h 11m Action Adventure Mystery & Thriller. List. 94% Tomatometer 327 Reviews. 87% Audience Score 50,000+ Ratings. With the IMF now disbanded and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise ...
Jack Reacher (2012)
photo double: Tom Cruise / utility stand-in Chrissie McLean ... executive assistant: Mr. McQuarrie & Mr. Granger Nick McMahon ... helicopter pilot Doug McQuarrie ... technical advisor: weapons Jonathan Medeiros ... set production assistant Brenden Meers ... production assistant Kristen Miller
Tom Cruise Movies Ranked
A Few Good Men (1992)84%. #14. Critics Consensus: An old-fashioned courtroom drama with a contemporary edge, A Few Good Men succeeds on the strength of its stars, with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and especially Jack Nicholson delivering powerful performances that more than compensate for the predictable plot.
The 45+ Best Sniper Movies, Ranked By Fans
The action thriller movie Jack Reacher, starring Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike, is a good action-mystery movie about a sniper. The film follows former military police officer Jack Reacher as he investigates an assassin who shot five random victims in Pittsburgh.
Jack Reacher (2012)
Jack Reacher - The Shooting Range: Before Reacher (Tom Cruise) can ask gunstore owner Martin Cash (Robert Duvall) about his customers, he has to first prove ...
Jack Reacher (Film)
Jack Reacher is a 2012 American action thriller film. It is an adaptation of Lee Child's Jack Reacher series, the 2005 novel One Shot more specifically.. A man with a sniper rifle goes to a parking garage overlooking the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh, and kills five people across the river in the park, seemingly at random.The police are quick to find evidence and the man, James Barr.
Jack Reacher
Jack Reacher is the protagonist of a series of crime thriller novels by British author Lee Child, a 2012 film adaptation, its 2016 sequel, and a television series on Amazon Prime Video.In the stories, Jack Reacher was a major in the US Army's military police.After leaving the army, Reacher roamed the United States, taking odd jobs investigating suspicious and dangerous situations.
The All-Time Greatest Actors In War Movies
In the movie, Cooper portrays sniper Chris Kyle, who became the deadliest sniper in American history with 255 kills from four tours during the Iraq War. The film went on to become the highest ...
Tom Cruise becomes the Sniper Master
Tom Cruise becomes the Sniper Master🔥 Buy or rent the movie NOW https://www.amazon.com/Jack-Reacher-Tom-Cruise/dp/B00BUCW54Q📢 Don't miss this video h...
15 Best Movies Like Jason Bourne
While Jason Bourne is a highly trained secret agent who saw his own country betray him, Hanna is a story about a young woman at the start of her training.Directed by Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice), Saoirse Ronan stars as Hanna Heller, a 15-year-old whose father lives with her in rural northern Finland.They are in hiding because the CIA wants her dad killed for leaving them, which makes his ...
'Mission: Impossible 7': Christopher McQuarrie Ranks Tom Cruise's Stunts
You know I like talking about editing and runtimes and all that stuff, so I'll just bring it in now. The movie's like 2.5 hours, maybe a few minutes over.
ভয়ংকর স্নাইপার যখন আর্মির শত্রু
Movie Explain in Bangla | ভয়া*নক স্নাইপার যখন আর্মির শত্রু । Sniper | Action | Thriller | Mission | Tom Cruise | Cine Recaps BD🚩🚩 ...

The Ending Of Jack Reacher Explained

The full confession of an innocent man

The deconstruction of the Action Hero

Jack Reacher

Cast and Crew

Other formats

Might Makes Him Mr. Right

Explore More in TV and Movies

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Email not verified

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Movies / TV

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation

What to Know

Critics Reviews

Movie Clips

Jack Reacher (2012)

Directed by

Contribute to This Page

Did You Know?

Photo & Video

Related Items

Recently Viewed

Scope Out The Best Sniper Movies Ever Made

Enemy at the Gates

American Sniper

Saving Private Ryan

Dirty Harry

Sniper: The White Raven

Battle for Sevastopol

Jack Reacher

Phone Booth

Sniper: Reloaded

The American

Sniper: Assassin's End

Silent Trigger

The Virtuoso

Two-Minute Warning

D.C. Sniper: 23 Days of Fear

Assassination Games

Sniper: Special Ops

Grand Piano

Sniper: Ultimate Kill

Elephant White

Fortress: Sniper's Eye

Liberty Stands Still

William Kelly's War

The Deadly Tower

Sniper's Ridge

Sharpshooter

Love and a Bullet

D.C. Sniper

Straight Shooter

Jack Reacher » Film

Jack Reacher contains examples of:

The All-Time Greatest Actors In War Movies

Martin Sheen Stars In One Of The Most Classic War Films Ever Made

Mel Gibson Is The King Of War And Gore

Gerard Butler Fits The Role As King Leonidas In 300

Tom Hanks Takes Point In Saving Private Ryan

Willem Dafoe Dies Heroically In Platoon

Steve McQueen Never Shied Away From War Films

Jude Law Becomes An Unexpected War Hero In Enemy At The Gates

Lee Ermey Ad-Libbed Most Of His Lines In Full Metal Jacket

Brad Pitt Has Been A Soldier Throughout The Centuries

Russell Crowe Is A Force To Be Reckoned With When He's In Combat

George C. Scott Was General Patton Reborn In Patton

Robert DuVall Knows "Charlie Don't Surf" In Apocalypse Now

Bradley Cooper Bulked Up For American Sniper

Andrew Garfield Just Wants "One More" In Hacksaw Ridge

Timothée Chalamet On An Unprecedented Role In The King

Mark Whalberg Barely Makes It Out Alive In Lone Survivor

Chris Pine Lead His Countrymen In Outlaw King

Orlando Bloom Plays A Fictionalized Version Of The Crusader Balian de Ibelin In Kingdom Of Heaven

Tom Cruise Has A Fair Share Of War Movie Under His Belt

Robert De Niro Gives A Gut-Wrenching Performance In The Deer Hunter

More for You

Screen Rant

10 Things Only Die-Hard Fans Know About The Jason Bourne Movies

How To Watch The Jason Bourne Movies In Order (Chronologically & By Release Date)