Jack Reacher

"6' 5" tall (1.96 m) with a 50-inch chest, and weighing between 210 and 250 pounds (100–115 kg). He has ice-blue eyes and dirty blond hair." is how Lee Childs, writer of One Shot described the character of Jack Reacher. When reading this description, not many people would think to cast Tom Cruise. Not even because of the hair and eye colour issue but the small problem (no pun intended) of him being a whole foot too short, and not impressively built. Mostly, this wouldn't be an issue, as I found casting Will Smith as Robert Neville in I Am Legend who was originally written to have long blonde hair, a beard, and piercing blue eyes to be passable simply because those traits weren't greatly important to the character's portrayal. With Jack Reacher, however, his appearance as an intimidatingly large man, of impressive stature was so crucial to the storyline that I found little Tom Cruise trying to fill much bigger boots incredibly distracting and almost laughable. Even if he was the correct height, Jack Reacher played by Tom Cruise didn't so much come across as cool and aloof but just plain cocky and annoying (as many of Tom Cruises' characters tend to be). If you're going to make all the supporting actors so incredibly shallow I would recommend you make the leading man ever so slightly likable or at the very least believable.

However, what he lacks in likeliness to the character, I guess he made up in money as he produced the film. All in all, I feel like I've just watched Tom Cruises' midlife crisis.