Outcry Begins Over Possible Casting of Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher

The outcry over the potential casting of Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher is the most fervidly negative since -- the outcry over the casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat in "Interview with the Vampire." Jack Reacher, for those not in the know, is a character in a wildly successful series of books about a monosyllabic drifter who has a brain but is certainly not above using his Army training to enact a little dose of revenge against the little guy who has been overcome by a touch of evil.

Oh yeah, and he's also well over six feet tall, weighs in the neighborhood of 240 pounds, and looks like he should have been played by Jesse Ventura about 20 years ago.

Tom Cruise, on the other hand, is about 5'7" while wearing heels and, while certainly possessed of a lithe muscular physique, is hardly going to instill the fear of god in somebody with a gun in their hand merely by standing there in dirty clothes.

Funny thing about Hollywood. You could say you wanted to make a movie about Jackie Robinson breaking the color line in baseball and if somebody like Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Will Smith expressed an interest in playing the part, it would not matter that they were white or lacking in the necessary acting chops because some producer somewhere would seriously consider it.

Anne Rice notoriously expressed opposition to the idea of Tom Cruise assaying the role of her notoriously lugubrious vampire named Lestat, but once she saw the movie she miraculously changed her mind and made a big deal out of publicly declaring Cruises' performance thusly: "From the moment he appeared Tom was Lestat for me. He has the immense physical and moral presence; he was defiant and yet never without conscience; he was beautiful beyond description yet compelled to do cruel things. The sheer beauty of Tom was dazzling, but the polish of his acting, his flawless plunge into the Lestat persona, his ability to speak rather boldly poetic lines, and speak them with seeming ease and conviction were exhilarating and uplifting. The guy is great."

Anyone who watched "Interview with the Vampire" cannot help but wonder if Anne Rice actually ever attended a screening. Or else wonder just how many pieces of black clothing Rice was able to buy with her payoff money. The fact is that Tom Cruise was firmly in his adequate but hardly impressive mode in "Interview with the Vampire." The embarrassingly breathy gushing from Anne Rice quoted above seems to live within the universe of the reality of the movie version of "Interview with the Vampire" about as much as facts live within the reality of Glenn Beck.

Tom Cruise has not yet locked up the part of Jack Reacher, but unless he suddenly goes off on another couch jumping tangent on a talk show or a video is released in which it is revealed that Scientologists were actually behind the attacks of September 11, 2001, it seems unlikely that anyone else will be playing the part if Tom Cruise still wants it. In the meantime, it will be fun to see if Reacher's creator, Lee Child, will publicly condemn the casting only to make a miraculous turnaround and determine Cruise's performance to stand alongside Robert DeNiro's in "Raging Bull" and Robert Walker's in "Strangers on a Train."