Talking of sharp variations in personal preference concerning the same person, I've been catching up on Tom Cruise this last week:
Jack Reacher (2012) was more interesting than I expected it to be, though still not quite what I imagined either. It's more of a detective crime conspiracy film than an action film, something I'm more used to watching Denzel Washington do than Tom Cruise. I can't say I liked Cruise's Reacher character but apparently the books are popular.
His character is ultra-dead-inside and ultra-focused almost to the point of the autism spectrum where objectives supersede any sense of emotion. This makes for a cool action protagonist and helps reduce any dumb things happening such as plot-convenience metaphorical tripping over while running away, but inevitably leaves the film awkwardly cold and a bit wooden.
There are lots of enjoyable scenes and the regular tropes of this kind of thing are all of a decent enough standard that it gets an easy pass from instant mockery, though this is one of those movies that proves that CinemaSins does indeed know what it's talking about sometimes and accurately picks up on all the things that are a bit off about it. Worthwhile popcorn stuff that's about 20 minutes too long for it's own good 3.5/5
Edge of Tomorrow (2014) was very entertaining indeed. Sci-fi but more sci-fantasy, it's a blend of many other films, as if someone put the script of Groundhog Day into a food blender with The Matrix and Starship Troopers. The end result is surprisingly unique and interesting.
Every time Cruise dies he's reborn at an earlier point in the day, on the day of the big land assault against the aliens, to which he has to keep doing this until he figures out what's going on. An excellent unique aspect is how Cruise starts the film as a coward and it's nice to see him actually have to act beyond the protagonist stereotype, something he actually does very well.
Always nice to see the late Bill Paxton in these kind of movies as well. I have no huge complaints about this near perfection of cinema other than the expected nonsense of the inevitable plot holes that amass the more the film continues, as is to be expected with any time travel movie that attempts to take itself too seriously, this time resulting in a relatively unsatisfying ending and final 20 minutes generally. 4/5
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) is something that decided to improve on the original in all the wrong directions if you ask me. While the first one was only based on a short story, this is based on a whole book and so you'd expect a more complex consiracy/crime plot, but, alas, it's about three degrees dumber than the first one and about as generic as it can get.
Some evil military contractors are bumping off or framing innocent military personel so Jack Reacher comes in to solve the case, all in extremely predictable fashion and as formulaic as any cheap generic action movie. Compounding this is the now split screentime for our protagonist who now performs co-operative action with a strong female ass-kicker and, on top of this, with a plot-convenience surprise daughter (or IS it his daughter? etc) who does nothing but provide irritating ways to get our protagonists into ever depper shit.
One of those movies that rides the line of your patience, always tempting you to skip to the end but always just managing to shove in a watchable action sequence just before you give up. Wont make many people's top 100 even for this particular genre and doesn't even really deserve being mentioned in the same post as the other two movies above. 2/5