Of the many movies coming out this weekend or next week, I caught Tom Cruise's JACK REACHER earlier today. Decent, I kinda enjoyed it. A cheeseburger/airport novel of a movie that you get involved with, but it fades quickly afterwards. But as a murder mystery which I must admit engaged me, mixed with a crowd pleasing vigilante fantasy with my screening audience responding to the action and one-liners. In one regard it's the sort of movie Clint Eastwood used to crank out regularly for decades.

My favorite scene, as silly as it was, was when Robert Duvall refuses to answer any questions for Cruise. Unless he hits a target 3 times at his shooting range. Ridiculous, yet I like that level of earned respect from proving yourself. I'll also commend the very effective car chase sequence, which never deploys the evil shakey cam post-action camera work that most action films use by default anymore.

A little long though, a false step ending more befitting for a comic book movie, a nonsensical conclusion in the aftermath of the mayhem and carnage (at least for me), and one line that's obviously unintentionally hilarious because of Cruise's delivery ("I'll drink all your blood through a boot!"). But otherwise yeah I guess I would recommend this.

But walk, don't run, to go see it. You don't need this movie in your life, nor would you miss it if you never catch it. It's like that next hot dog your heart doesn't need but you'll stuff your face with anyway.

I give this Three and half evil Werner Herzogs out of 5.