The Legend Slayer Cometh
Once Again-Dismantling Or Trade Puffing The Legend Of One Jack Reacher?-Tom Cruise’s
“Jack Reacher” (2012)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Will Bradley
Jack Reacher, starring Tom
Cruise, 2012
I have been working on
other materials and have had no recent occasion to slay the fake legends that I
am committed to crushing or at least putting a dent into by bringing some light
to what they were really about for that segment of the legend-believing
population that is interested in the truth small as that population sometimes
appears. I have made a dent in the reputations of peasant rack-renter Robin Hood
once he got hold of some land and a few gifts from King Richard back in the 12th
century , impotent Don Juan the mere figment of the imaginations of some hemmed
in gentile young women cooped up by their parents in some twisted sister-nun run
convent, slave-trader Captain Blood who after hijacking a few privateers joined
the very lucrative slave-molasses-rum trade that really built the British Empire,
and most of all of Larry Lawrence the real Scotland Yard police dossier name of
one Sherlock Holmes (and his minion who went under the name Nigel Bruce
although that might not have been his real name before he went fugitive after
Larry’s capture since I keep hearing the name Watson mentioned when the
devotees get cooking on the legend).
Going the other way as I will today
although somewhat reluctantly with one Jack Reacher I have rehabilitated the sad-sack
legend Will Holt the ace ex-fighter who
was working in some Sonora cantina washing dishes before he had an epiphany as
the Green Hornet, paying homage to the Will the individual responsible for the protection
section 21, the Earth, and the organization of the same name of 3000 stalwarts
protecting the universe.
What did all those fake
legend guys have in common and notice they are all guys although I have not done
research enough of late being tied up with a project around B-film noir history
with fellow writer Sarah Lemoyne to tackle the likes of Wonder Woman, the Black
Widow and Betsy Ross? Good press agents and flak-catchers just like today with
everybody from the POTUS (Twitter speak) to your average middle school
promising football talent.
In the case of Robin Hood,
and a good reason why his fake legend lasted so long, he had Friar Tuck running
his publicity after they had “retired” from dangerous if profitable highway
robberies to gouging the peasantry using every flimsy feudal right granted when
King Richard got back in town. This Tuck was beautiful aside from putting the
halo on Robin’s head as some latter-day saint (small case not Joe Smith’s minions
with the white underwear fetish) he fabricated a whole bunch of bullshit
stories about Robin’s men. For example he had a rum-dum lecher named John Little
whom he renamed Little John (for which he got a big bonus from Hood so you know
he was rolling in dough when his ship came in after King Richard got back from
whatever hell-raising he was doting) acting as strong-arm bodyguard for Hood
(whose real names was Locker or something like that my Middle English not
strong). This John Little was all of five feet tall and maybe one hundred and
ten pounds soaking wet. I never bothered to break that part of the Hood legend
since John Little wound up as overseer on one of Hood’s vast estates.
As flak-catcher, who every
good press agent knows is necessary to balance off, make believable the legend
stuff, build it up, Prince John who only could afford some half -literate
unemployable second or third son of one of his liege lords went down in flames
for lack of a few more dollars or whatever the currency was back then. The
beauty of the thing for Robin Hood was that with Friar Tuck running point the
legend could go down the generations as long as the monasteries kept producing
youngsters with plenty of time on their hands and good penmanship. Don Juan the
same except this time it was one of the sex-starved daughters of the nobility
who kept their young womenfolk away from sexual temptations in those crummy
convents run by salacious and copulating nuns who used the name pen name last
name Lorenzo to keep the bastard’s legend going even when he fired blanks.
Flak-catcher an easy pick the Duke of Alvarez, as mean a son of a bitch as you
will ever find who was ready to according to the sly Lorenzo-created script was
crazy for the Queen who was Danish and so clueless about the stuff that was
happening in her and her king husband’s name. To round out just this trio of
examples, there are more but I need to get to my take on Jack Reacher before
long since I have to meet Sarah Lemoyne to watch the 1950s film noir The Long Sound let me deal with the
blood-thirsty slaver Captain Blood who had a guy named Long John Silver running
his operation until he got snatched by the British and hanged then the
Captain’s cabin girl/concubine took over the chores. Flak-catcher Davey Jones floating
headless out to the China seas who nobody then or now will miss.
Hell going the other way to
grab some information on the Green Hornet all I had to do was call up the
publicity department of the Green Hornet organization (they rent space these
days on the International Space Shuttle so a cellphone worked just fine) and
they gave me the lowdown on how Will Holt saved Earth from some bad-ass guy who
had already destroyed half the universe in his lust to have it all, have all
the power. With that in mine my qualms about Jack Reacher were first started
when I tried through a contact at the NSA to get his dossier, his record. Nada,
nothing which made me think that some governmental agency had made him up out
of whole cloth. It would not be the first time please remember the David Lally
case where the CIA doctored up everything just to cover up a rogue operation in
Iraq which went awry and Colonel Lally was held responsible. No such guy and
everybody walked away except the innocent Iraqi civilians which were declared
“collateral damage.”
I frankly got a little
scared knowing that sometime was wrong, something was wrong in an age when you
can find lost relatives in a couple of hours, could bankrupt the world economy
one morning and still have time for an early lunch, but I couldn’t put my
fingers on it. I began to think there was some truth to all those conspiracy
theories about the “deep state” and their nefarious doings. Then out of nowhere
Jack Reacher, although that was not his real name but we are used to aliases in
this legend business showed up to help a guy he didn’t even like, have tried to
have court martialed when he went crazy not seeing any action as a sniper in
Iraq and free-fired a few bursts at some handy live targets so I had to check
further.
Strange as it may seem some
people, some guys and gals, want to be left alone, want to go “off the
grid.” That turned out to be the case with
Reacher after he flipped out and left his commanding officer job as head of a
military police unit to go wander the known universe. Still despite all the
disclaimers I know he was still “connected” through back channels so for a long
time I really feared some “deep state” noise if I even whispered that I thought
he might deserve the legend that was built around his unorthodox methods to get
a little rough justice in this wicked world as Seth Garth would say when I was
in a working duel with him over the basic of the Larry Lawrence legend
Here is how Jack played his
hand, the hand dealt him. This Iraq sniper who got away with murder over there,
a lone wolf, loner guy who nobody gave a damn about named Barr was frankly
framed for the spray killing of a bunch of people who were just minding their
own business before they were mowed down. Captured with the evidence, planted
evidence, overwhelmingly against him before he called Jack to get him out of
the biggest jam of his life, a big step off in some lonesome death row hotel.
But from the get-go things didn’t add up, the whole thing smelled to high
heaven and Jack was hooked despite his attitude toward the crumb-bum Barr.
Jack unraveled this one
with his usual aplomb and take no prisoners policy which made him the perfect
hero for modern world where governments are shy with the justice no matter how
blind. Barr was set upon no question, an easy pick-off but why. That is where
the rubber hits the road. A vast organization, a criminal enterprise as they
say in RICO language had tried to take over a local construction company to
have a base to syphon off government monies to do things like built roads to
nowhere and bridges half-built, also to nowhere. In other words stuff that needed plenty of
low-grade cement and substandard steel. Problem was that that the lady who
owned the company balked at the last minute. She had to be wasted, done away
with without making it look like the criminal conspiracy was involved.
This is where the action
and Jack’s heroic actions came in handy especially when he almost went under
the silky sheets with Barr’s pro bono attorney, a real looker who nobody would
turn down with the least encouragement (although Jack seemed strangely to be
immune to her charms which brings homosexuality into the picture which is okay
these days even in the military since finally, military or civilian who you love
is nobody’s business not the government’s anyway) . These days if you want a
hit man, a hit squad as in the case here you grab a bunch of Russians, the up
and coming criminal operatives ever since the demise of the Soviet Union and as
ruthless as the previous hit squads of choice the Italians and Irish. That
squad is what Jack had to confront (with a little help from an ex-Marine of
course) to clear Barr (and save that good-looking lawyer). As usual with hit
squads, Russians or otherwise, against a mean machine loner justice freak like
Jack they are cheapjack otherwise unemployable poor shots who couldn’t hit the
side of a barn, lucky for Jack. In the end he will clear Barr (of this crime)
by cleaning the clocks of those rough Russian bastards (shades of the old-time
Cold War which I barely remember but the guys who write here know in depth).
Then drift out of town back onto the no grid highway. Oh, by the way
justice-seeker or not do not lend Jack Reacher your automobile if you need his
services. Or if you do make sure your collision insurance is up to date. Enough
said about a well-deserved modern legendary figure.
