We chat with screenwriter Marshall Herskovitz about Jack Reacher: Never Go Back…
What was your familiarity with the character from the first film?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: You know I had never read the books before we came to this project but I had seen the first Jack Reacher movie and I really liked it. I kind of got the idea of this guy who doesn’t take crap from anybody, who lives on his own you know. Who you know is sort of a one-man retaliatory force for justice, and that there’s a wish fulfillment in that we all feel that somebody would sort of stand up against the bad guys and just do what’s necessary in some way. And it tickled me and I was really happy when we got the call that Tom wanted us to work on this. Both [director] Ed Zwick and I have a long-standing love of sort of you know, whether it’s action films or specially spy films or tradecraft or thrillers that sort of thing, and people don’t usually associate us with that sort of thing. So the chance to work on a movie like this was just, really fun.
How did you guys arrive at which book you were going to use to situate this story?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: Well that had already been decided before we came on board. In other words, they’d already picked this novel and the reason they approached us was because this particular novel has more relationships in it than most of the Jack Reacher novels. He’s got this involvement with Susan Turner, he’s got involvement with a girl who could be his daughter. What’s interesting is you take this character this classic American loner Jack Reacher and you put him up against these people that he could love, that he could become connected to and what’s he gonna do? Part of the enjoyment of this was watching this guy you know who’s really so comfortable being by himself be with this people he comes to care about. So it’s that, it’s that dynamic tension between wanting to be by himself, wanting to be who Jack Reacher is and being drawn to these two female characters.
How did you work with Tom Cruise to put things together?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: You know we have worked with Tom before on The Last Samurai and the thing I love about working with Tom is that first of all he has no vanity when you’re talking about script. He’s not thinking about what’s gonna make his character look good or anything that many actors think about. He’s only thinking about what’s gonna make this a great movie, and all of his efforts are about how can every piece of this pay off, and how you can achieve the objectives you want to achieve in this movie you know. Samurai was one thing which was the sort of epic story and, and with all these epic themes. And in this movie it’s about portraying this man who is in some way challenged by these two people who come into his life. And you know the great thing about Tom is it’s just about how can we make it great. Every day it’s how can we make this great, and it’s a really refreshing attitude. It’s not an attitude you always find in Hollywood and it’s why we love working with him.
Where is Jack at when we see him in the beginning of the film?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: You know what’s interesting is that in the beginning of the film you’re seeing what almost feels like the end of another film which is you know, he has solved some story that you’re just coming on in the end of and I won’t give away what it is but you see a little bit of it in the trailer. And it’s really just to remind the audience that this is who Jack Reacher is. You don’t mess with this guy, and it has some of those classic Jack Reacherisms. Like he says two things are gonna happen in the next 90 seconds; there’s something about his certitude that is so attractive and enjoyable to write and, and to play. And so, we see him sort of in his life in some way, but we also see that he’s having a connection with Susan Turner who is still with the MPs which is what he used to be. She’s in fact taken over his position as a commanding officer at the fort where he was so we see the beginnings of a relationship. Now in the books that relationship is explored in other novels as well but this is the first time we see it in the movies and at first it’s just these two people on the telephone so we get the sense that even though Jack Reacher is really happy being by himself, you know there is this pull just this little bit of a pull. Like maybe he would be interested in this person so there’s a little crack in the facade and I think the whole movie takes advantage of that little crack that sort of draws him to sort of check on this woman.
Why was Cobie right for the role for Turner?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: We just fell in love with Cobie the minute we met her. There was just something about her that was a combination of qualities. First of all, she has a face that you just have to like. She’s beautiful but there’s something else too. There’s just a charm or a, there’s just something that draws you into that face where you go I just like that person. I just want to be with that person and, and you know at the same time she’s athletic, she’s strong, she can play this woman whose a major in the army. And it was really important to all of us from the beginning that she be able to stand up to Tom. She doesn’t take crap from anybody and so she’s definitely not the damsel in distress. She is someone who is used to being in command, and part of the fun of writing this was the two of them sort of you know butting up against each other, saying but wait a minute who’s in charge here? Because he’s used to doing it his way, she’s used to doing it her way and so they clash. That was fun.
Can we discuss the action scene in the French Quarter?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: Once we decided to set the last half of the movie in New Orleans, then you know you get all of the fun in New Orleans and Ed had this idea of using the Halloween parade which is just this astonishing event there. And then we had to think about the particular difficulties of trying to shoot against this real parade. So of course what we ended up doing was having a lot of the real parade and then recreating that parade with a lot of our own extras and CG, doing it in such a way that the audience never sees you know what was actually the real parade and what we’ve created. That’s why we make movies, we’re creating illusions like that and that was you know certainly fun for me as a writer. I’m not sure it was as much fun for Ed as a director having to be there night after night after night, dealing with hundreds of extras but I think it really pays off in the movie. It’s something we’ve never seen before in films and it’s this incredibly colorful exciting background to something that’s really scary and really propulsive and it’s just you know, it’s just ended up being a really great choice.
What was fun about bringing what you guys do to Danika Yarosh’s character Samantha?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: We loved writing Samantha. First of all, the idea is he doesn’t know if Samantha is his daughter or not. So what you’re playing on is he’s looking at her, even if you don’t see it in the scenes, you just know that character’s looking at her going, Is that my daughter? And so what does that mean, he’s looking at her behavior and so the idea that she just has some of the talents that he has. Like early in the film, not giving anything away, she busts him that he’s following her. He’s pretty good at following people but she figures out that he’s following her. You know, it’s like she has a natural ability to lose herself, to handle situations. Because she’s a really capable young person. And I can’t tell you how much fun that is to write because she’s got this energy coming out of her that’s just sort of very special and intelligent.
What was it about how Lee wrote about the character of The Hunter that you guys were able to build on?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: Well again it’s like there’s this arms race right now in action films and you know, we thought that you know instead of trying to compete in the world of technology and huge CG where you’re destroying entire cities and hundreds of cars, there is something about this that’s a little bit acoustic in that way and what we wanted was just somebody who was in many ways as good as Reacher, as tough as Reacher, as scary as Reacher but also malevolent and unstoppable. Not a machine but a man, and the idea of having fights where Reacher just can’t really beat this guy. ‘Cause you see Reacher, part of the fun of Reacher is he just goes and takes down four guys like that, and you feel all of his invincibility and all of a sudden boom he comes up against somebody he can’t beat, that makes drama you know and that makes a great story. So we wanted to make sure that we endowed this guy, The Hunter with these qualities that made the audience go whoa, whoa wait a minute here, what’s gonna happen? Because that’s not what I thought. Reacher can’t just take that guy out.
What makes Reacher someone that the audience love?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: I look at Jack Reacher and I think about the level of outrage that people feel in society today over so many things. People feel ripped-off, exploited you know. Look at what’s happening to our election right now, look how many people feel that the system is rigged on the right and the left, who feel powerless in some way, who feel that the world is constructed in such a way that it’s gonna do to you what it’s gonna do you and there’s nothing that you can do about it. And the idea of this man who just doesn’t take crap from anybody, and who has the power and the will to just make it happen you know to just walk up to somebody who’s a bad guy and just go boom boom boom and the guy’s down. That level of intensity and, and capability I think is just a classic wish fulfillment for everybody that we all wish we could do in this situations that confront us. And, and we know we can’t, and that’s why we go to movies, ’cause in the movies we can see somebody do that and we can cheer for him and, and feel his power and feel that that’s our power.
How do you write an action scene for Tom that would make it different from his character Ethan Hunt?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: It’s that word acoustic, these are real fights between real people and it means that you’re making use of the fact that Tom is so astonishingly physically adapt and agile that and such an athlete and that he can basically do all of these things. And the idea is I think first of all, we internalize who this character is, ’cause you’re right he is not like Ethan in Mission: Impossible, he’s a different guy. He’s first of all very quiet, he’s very internal. He’s a loner, he’s not verbal and you know and he very quickly rights wrongs when he sees them. He doesn’t wait. In the Mission: Impossible movies, it’s all about a mission and you got to think through how you’re gonna get to that place and go through all the different things, and there’s a lot of delayed gratification in the Mission Impossible movies because it’s a plot they have to make happen. Reacher’s not like that, Reacher is ‘oh I see this, I’m gonna take you out right now’, and so there’s an immediacy to him, there’s an internal quality to him. So what we do is we sort of get Reacher in our heads, and once we have Reacher in our heads then we know how he’s gonna fight. We know how he’s gonna handle a situation. We know what he’s gonna do when he sees somebody following them. We know just what he’s going to do when he walks into that restaurant and he has five seconds to figure out how he’s gonna fight that guy. We know how he’s gonna grab and what he’s gonna do, because we’ve internalized him.
How would you explain this movie if I haven’t seen the first one?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: The story of Jack Reacher 2 is that Reacher finds himself drawn to the new commanding officer of the fort where he used to be the commanding officer. Drawn to the point where he thinks he might go visit her, and when he goes to visit her he discovers that she’s been arrested and is in jail for espionage and he just knows right off something is really wrong with the situation. And that just sets in motion you know a whole sequence of events about a conspiracy having to do with what went on in Afghanistan with a huge contractor called Parasource. And also this whole interesting sub-plot about the fact that he discovers that there’s been a paternity suit against him and that he may have a 15-year-old daughter. So he’s been pulled into a situation that in some way already exists that because he cannot stand injustice and that he feels something for the person involved, he’s got to thrown himself into it.
The idea of Reacher being back in the military is not something he wants is it?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: No, but the interesting thing is that he never comports himself in any way like a military person in this movie. In other words, he’s not going back in. He’s fighting these forces which have in some way insinuated themselves into the military police unit that he was a part of. So this is not him going back into the service of becoming an MP again himself. This is him trying to save someone he likes and trying to right a wrong and trying to bring down guys that he knows are bad. But he does not in any way follow the book or do it the military way, he does it the Jack Reacher way.
How is Parasource involved in what Reacher is looking into?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: Well, Parasource is a stand-in for some of the very large companies that are contractors for the military right now. I think most people don’t realize that the majority of work done in Afghanistan is done by civilian contractors. We think it’s done by our military, and our military does an amazing job there, but we actually spend more money on contractors and it’s a huge part of our effort, and there’s very little oversight over these companies. And as we’ve seen with Blackwater and other companies sometimes bad stuff happens because it’s not the part of the normal military command structure, and a lot of the funds that go into them are Black funds that we can’t really follow. We are not saying in any way that the real contractors that work in Afghanistan are as bad as Parasource, but we are saying that this is an area that needs more oversight than it gets and it’s conceivable that a company like Parasource could be involved in real illegal activity for its own gain, that would be at the expense of Americans and American soldiers. So it’s not out of the realms of possibility at all.
Have you ever described to anyone how it is to follow Tom’s day besides acting in it?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: It’s, it’s too tiring to describe what Tom does in a day. First of all, by the time you see Tom in the morning he’s already worked out for a couple of hours. The thing that always amazes me about Tom is that he’s truly a producer. He thinks about the whole process, he’s thinking about what’s coming up, what it looks like. He wants to make sure that everybody is being dealt with in a fair and good way. He’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with, and he’s so polite to everyone, but it goes deeper than that. He wants to make sure that, you know, are the stunt guys having what they need? Or you know, he doesn’t want to see people put in danger. He wants to make sure that the production is run in the right way. So, he has a global view of things, and this constant view of things sort of questioning, is this script matching what our aims are, and challenging himself to do the best job and to make it look the best and to have it be exciting, and he does it with enthusiasm. He doesn’t do it from a negative place and that’s what I love about Tom, he loves making movies and he wants to make great movie and he wants the audience to love it. And so there’s a kind of a generosity of spirit and a joy that comes with it that’s quite infectious.
Who are people connecting with in this movie?
MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ: I think different audiences connect with what they want to connect with. I think this is an interesting film because if anything Reacher is more kick-ass in this movie than he was in the first movie. He’s tougher, he does cooler things, there’s a higher body count. But at the same time there are these connections with these two people, with this young girl and with Major Turner and so there’s a relationship element to this movie. And there’s always this sort of I think dynamic tension between the fact that he’s Reacher and you don’t stop Reacher and Reacher’s tough and he’s drawn to these people. I personally find this movie really exciting to watch and then at the end very emotional. I’m really moved by it, and I think people will be surprised. I don’t think people would go to this movie thinking they’ll be moved by the film, and you know in some ways it’s even perhaps wrong to even hint at that because I think people want go and they want to see an action film, and believe me they will, but there’s an added element to this which is there’s a humanity finally at the end that is, is very powerful and satisfying.
Jack Reacher is available now on Digital Download and release on Blu-ray and DVD on the 27th of February.
