Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

This is the second and last film with Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher. It's no surprise that this sank the nascent franchise given that whilst there's nothing especially bad about it it's all quite forgettable. Is Tom Cruise miscast as Reacher?  I can't really say given that I've never read any of the novels but judging the recent Amazon Prime series Reacher is very much the strong silent type of hero, which doesn't really play to Cruise's strengths.  He gets very little opportunity here to show any of the Cruise pizazz and when he does it seems out of character. The critics didn't much like the plot. Compared with Lee Child’s source novel it's clear that what we have here is a much simplified story with one character, Sam (a teenage girl who might be Reacher's daughter), brought centre stage.   She's not as irritating as I feared, showing some spirit and initiative early on, but unfortunately towards the end she does something very stupid and out...

Sadly this is the sort of film that is no longer made - a somewhat earnest and not obviously  exciting story, with two star actors at the top of the billing, but little in the way of marketing gimmicks to draw an audience. Gosh, I'm making it sound quite dull, which is far from the case. For a start, the setup is an intriguing one. Colonel Nat Serling (Denzil Washington) is given the job of assessing whether Captain Karen Walden (Meg Ryan, of all people) deserves a posthumous Medal of Honour, she having died whilst her helicopter crew was rescuing the crew of another helicopter, shot down during the Persian Gulf War.  Serling himself is struggling with a huge burden of grief and guilt.  In an excellent opening sequence we see a tank battle in which Serling gives the order to fire upon what turns out to be a US tank commanded by (wouldn't you know) a close friend of Serling's, Boylar.   The military are not keen to own up to this 'friendly fire' incident, and so ...