I watched Jack Reacher for the first time tonight. It's from 2012, which was a year I didn't go to the theatre much. I think i went three times that year (The Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall, The Dictator), and regretted two of them.
Jack Reacher was pretty good though! Sure, the protagonist and villain were a bit too cartoony, and there were a few minor plot holes, but the story was interesting, and I really liked the action scenes. One scene stood out though.
It's not that the rest of the film is completely without humour, but mostly the chuckles were earned through witty dialogue, while the rest of the action was all very serious and realistic. This one scene stood in stark contrast, as pure slapstick silliness. And it immediately made me think of a scene in an entirely different Tom Cruise film.
If you've never seen Minority Report: 1) You should. 2) It's a serious film about serious themes. Like in Jack Reacher, there's this one scene that really stands out, in this case a gross-out comedy routine.
So we have two serious action films starring Tom Cruise, both with silly out-of-place comedy scenes. Coincidence? Or have I, like Cruise in both of those films, stumbled across a nefarious conspiracy?