Why Tom Cruise???
Yesterday, a group of friends across Western Massachusetts where heard to collectively facepalm at the news that Tom Cruise is currently considering the role of Jack Reacher, the hardboilded badass detective in a novel series authored by Lee Child...
Mike Fleming reporting for Deadline New York tells us that Child is excited to have Cruise play Reacher, and that Cruise embodies the character qualities of Reacher...
Um, really???
Is Child perhaps "excited" the way Anne Rice was "excited" when Tom Cruise ended up playing Lestat in Interview with the Vampire? (a character that was inspired by Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner. Personally, I would have loved a paunchy Hauer as Lestat than wimpy Cruise...)
So, let's look at the possiblity of Cruise being believeable as a badass. Or even slightly badass. Did we really believe him in Valkyrie? According to the Tomatometer, only 61 percent of critics and slightly more (66 percent) of audience memebers bought it.
Looking over Cruise's movie credits, very few of the characters he's played could be the embodiment of a 6' 5", 250 lb. badass. Even Ethan Hunt of the Mission Impossible francise is more one of those coiled ropey little guys who *might* have got into the CIA because of some certain level of either intelligence or sociopathology. In Minority Report he's surrounded by beefy guys and looks kind of funny trying to haul Samantha Morton around....
So, really--Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher?
If you think about it, you might find yourself facepalming too.
