When if was first confirmed that Tom Cruise was going portray Lee Child’s hulking hero Jack Reacher in action-thriller ONE SHOT, fans of the character were literally up-in-arms about the decision. After all, Cruise is hardly the 6′ 5” brute described by the author in his series of novels.
Neil Jordan had similar uproar when he cast Cruise in his gothic vampire adaptation of Anne Rice’s INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. Rice, at the time was dead against Cruise being cast as in the lead as vampire Lestat, but later issued an apology after viewing the film.
The actor has spoken to Empire to get across to the fans that he aims to do the character justice.
‘Firstly, I’m very sensitive to it. This is Lee’s book and Lee’s character. Him giving me his blessing is what made me do it. If he hadn’t then I wouldn’t have done it. Lee told me that the reason he wrote him that size is because that was just one element to his character, and that opened the door to me playing him. Reacher is such a great character. He doesn’t have a cell phone, he doesn’t have email. He’s off the grid. He pays for things in cash. People look at things through the prism of the colours of their life, but Jack Reacher does things the way we want to sometimes. In that sense he’s sort of a Dirty Harry, a James Bond, a Josey Wales’.
ONE SHOT is currently in production, WAY OF THE GUN writer/director Christopher McQuarrie is directing with Rosamund Pike, Robert Duvall, Werner Herzog, Jai Courtney and Richard Jenkins co-starring.
Source: Empire
