'One Shot': quite a stretch for Jack Reacher
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Passing through the North Shore Thursday morning, I spotted lots of white sawhorses and big white trucks with virtual mini-marts spilling out their rear doors.
Road blockades. Craft services.
Hadn't my daughter mentioned something about "So You Think You Can Dance"? Or were the "American Idol" judges still in town? Could Steven Tyler really consume that many Doritos?
But the morning fog suddenly lifted from my brain. I remembered the previous day's article warning us about street closings for filming "One Shot."
I cannot call it "a Tom Cruise thriller." It's the ninth of 16 thrillers written by Lee Child featuring the nearly iconic (to me) Jack Reacher.
In "One Shot," Pittsburgh is standing in for a small-ish Indiana city, and the small-ish Tom Cruise is standing in for the 6-foot-5 Reacher.
When I heard it would be filmed here, I toyed with the idea of being an extra so I could say I'd been in a Jack Reacher movie. But that thought lasted about five seconds. I wouldn't be even a tiny part of such a desecration. The shame!
In fact, this movie is seriously pitting me against my hometown. I gotta work this out.
These are the only thrillers I actually re-read -- because the thrill doesn't wear off and they're that well-written.
The latest one, "The Affair," was released in the U.S. two weeks ago -- on Tuesday, Sept. 27 -- and I bought it that night. Since my husband had discovered and gotten me hooked on Reacher a few years earlier, I presented the new book to him as a gift -- without actually letting go of it.
I finished it sometime Wednesday.
So, yes, I feel a little possessive of this series. And that makes me feel ... judgmental. Me, and the readers of the other 40 million Reacher books sold to date.
Fans protested mightily when the headlining star was announced. How could Tom Cruise play a giant of an ex-military police officer with dirty blond hair, who weighs 220-250 pounds, depending on how strenuous his odd jobs and his travels across America are?
It'd be like casting Jane Lynch of "Glee" to play Harry Potter. Or vice versa.
Author Lee Child defended the producers' decision thus: "Reacher's size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way."
First Published October 10, 2011 12:00 am
