Blank Jack was Griffin and David Blank Jack was Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you know is that the name of the show is Blank Jack You think I'm a hero? I'm not a hero. I'm a drifter with nothing to lose Now you killed that girl to put me in a frame I mean to beat you to death and drink your blood from a boot Now this is how it's gonna work You're gonna give me the address And I'll be along when I'm damn good and ready She has answered the phone when I call this number If I can thank you for her, I disappear If you're smart, that scares you Because I'm in your blind spot And I have nothing better to podcast Nothing better to podcast Hello everybody, my name is Griffin Newman My name is David Sim This is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David I don't know what this is that you're doing with this We are Hash Check the two friends Yes! We're two friends we have to podcast together What's the premise of the podcast?
We like looking at careers Some people look at the micro, we look at the macro baby We like charting Yeah And this weird conundrum What happens when you're in Hollywood? You got some heat, you got some power You know you're no longer begging for scraps You have the ability to make things happen What's happening right now? You got a blank check Sure Sometimes I check bounces Sometimes I clear as baby But once in a while, we do a one-off Once in a while something sparks our interest Right, and there's a combination of factors You know? A, a movie comes out that we just can't help but talk about Okay, yeah, right, we see the movie and we're like Ahhhhhhh And you and I just feel like this ties together Some things that we can talk about So we got to talk about this movie Part two is We've been told that our ratings are good when we do one-offs about films currently That's true People like to see movies that are in theaters Rather than unavailable on all streaming platforms Or even on Blu-ray and DVD like the Abyss Sub-tweet-the-abists We don't try to use that but it's, you know We try to mix it up a little bit Try to throw on these and everyone's along Right?
Yeah Part three is sometimes we have scheduling issues And we have a hard time liking out the episode on the right day Because everyone schedules are crazy And we don't want to go without doing an episode Of course So that means today we're here to talk about a very important movie Don't you're, I feel like you're always going to do this I tweeted at you months ago saying we got to do that Well I had told you years ago that this movie should be seen And I was like, huh, I don't know man, and then I, you know I got around to it Between me you were like, why don't you tell me to see this movie This movie is my favorite movie of all time It's the best movie ever made Yeah, I agree I've been telling you that for fucking years Well, I got around to it So you finally got around to it on the eve of its sequel We should do something for this franchise, especially after seeing the second one When I went to an advanced screening of the second one We did, we haven't said the name yet No And, you know, we'll know because it's podcast and it's in the title of the episode The day that we're recording this episode of the movie's coming out Yes, it comes out this evening I guess Yes, it comes out right now This will drop on the Monday after when we know the box office rolls Yeah, it'll make 25 million I think it'll make 17 Of course we're only open to 15 Right, but it was a very nice Christmas corridor Yeah, you know, it was a nice little word of mouth, you know, a dad movie And a bit of 80 domestic and I think like 250 worldwide Not huge numbers Not something that would automatically lead to a sequel Fine, but I think an interesting phenomenon here is that the star of this franchise Really wants to make it a franchise I guess so, I think and we were talking about this and I'm sure we will talk about this He sees Long Jeveny in this for him Oh, we're gonna talk about this But the story, the narrative we're telling in this very special one-off episode Is how Tom keeps trying to make Reach happen Ladies and gentlemen, enough suspense Yep, you've already read the title of the episode Yep, you of course now are listening to We don't actually jack Reachcast Okay, there we go Never pot home, never pot back, never go pot We're gonna have to figure that, I was gonna say we actually didn't talk about what the title of the episode Jack is going to be a little bit more We'll talk about what the title of the episode Jack Reachcast colon, we agree on that Jack Reachcast colon, never pod back Never pot back, never pot back, yeah, never pod back, yes, that's what we should do Jack Reachcast, never pod back, great So we swapped pod and cast, we inverted them Sometimes you gotta Sometimes you gotta invert, and that's what we're doing today We're inverting the format of our show Here we are, we're talking about Jack Reacher And Jack Reacher never go back, we're gonna talk about a series of Jack Reacher We might spoil Jack Reacher never go back a little bit But look, you've had a whole weekend So if you, you know, you've got to get to Jack Reacher never go back Please do that and then listen to this podcast What we'll mostly be talking about, Reacher 1, I don't know We'll talk about it all, we're gonna talk about it all No, this overlaps with some themes that have been going on recently in podcast In our camera curminers, we talked about old TCL app TC14? Tongue Cruise 14? Yeah, we talked about Tommy Cruise, we like Tommy Cruise Right, and he is kind of a blank check actor Absolutely, because it's Tom Cruise's production, and he's kind of an outtor of all his movies because his persona is so big And so under his control He hires the directors, he very much manages his brand For 20 years now, mission impossible, which was the first Cruise wagon production That was the first time he was sort of overseeing everything, and that's just been the norm for him ever since And the key thing is between, you know, Top Gun Sure, which is the thing that elevated him to Big Superstar, right? Like Risky Business Man, I'm a star, Top Gun Man, I'm a superstar, and now he's got the blank check Between that film and mission impossible, I would argue with a very few exceptions Went about trying to work with all the best living American directors Color Money, Source Ezzy Who directed a cocktail, I said Cocktails the exception Rain Man, Barry Levinson, born on 4th of July, all over Stone, days of thunder, that doesn't count Who directed a Yeah, it's fine, right?
Far and away, Ron Howard, if you could met Rob Reiner, my firm is The City Pollock, exactly, interview with the man, Byron Ewell Jordan, like he's making a lot of Oscar plays He's making a lot of serious movies He's tossing in a couple fun ones for the fans These are heavy hitters of the 80s and 90s, and he's sort of going through them and trying to figure out And he's working with also other huge movies stars, he's working with Paul Newman, he's working with Dustin Hoffman He's working with Jack Nicholson, you know? Often, almost always kind of, almost playing a supporting role to them in terms of like Which is interesting He's kind of making the less interesting role, doing a decent job, usually He's kind of making the straight man or the kid or the pro-the-cat I mean apart from Born on the 4th of July, which is a real, you know, sort of like, give me an Oscar, pay attention to me performance And his both his first Oscar nomination ends at the time, the youngest person ever to be nominated for Best Actor Yeah, that's true, which is crazy, that seems insane, but it's 100% true Oh, what was he? 29? Yeah, they do favor, you know, they go older, with actors than they do with this Right, but no, like Eddie Redmayne won, he was like 27 or something No, he's not, Eddie Redmayne's older than he think he is, he's like 33 I thought he was the youngest winner ever one No, it's still Adrian Brody who was 29 when he won Yeah, fair enough, okay, Eddie Redmayne was like 33 when he won, Eddie Redmayne just- He was 32, I think, yeah Right, which means he's now 34, but he seems like he's 12 Right, okay, whereas for Best Actress it's Paul Von Tewal who was 6 when he was- Well, it's not me, anyway, I think Tom Cruise was the youngest nominee ever, and he was 29 There's a big difference between Best Actor and Best Actor and Best Actor Sure, sure, I mean he told this up, because you're confusing me Because I'm interested- Throw it out too many seconds, you are, you don't know what, okay, it's early, we don't usually record this early But Tom Cruise and Edward have been talking about a lot, right, and I think the Jack Reacher franchise is budding franchise, you know?
It's very emblematic of the sort of weird space he's in right, the sort of crossroads he's at in his career The other thing this overlaps with is we talked a lot about in our Bender Siege 2 Dark Podcast episode But it was representative of a movie that kind of doesn't really exist anymore And especially not at that level, and the equivalent is like the Jason State, the movies which are a lot cheaper, you know? You're way off in the set, I don't know where you got this from, but it's not true It's not true, you know? How old was Tom Cruise? I don't know, but he doesn't even make the top 10 of youngest nominee At the time?
Yeah, at the time. I mean, there's a couple of newer entries in here, maybe he'd make the top 10 Who's youngest of all- Jackie Cooper for Skippy in 1930? He was nine years old So we're not here this fucking set No idea, Mickey Rooney got two nominations when he was a teenager John Travolta, 24 years old for Sennheite Fever is your youngest like kind of non-old-fashioned Oscar nominee James Dean got two nominations before he died Ryan Gosling, Orson Welles for Citizen Kane was only 26 years old He led her, was only 26 years old, which is- So this is me, I'm sorry, that was me, I said that's only a pen for him Wait a second, wait a second He led her was only 26, we made a book back mountain, that's crazy It sucks that he's dead, okay I was a great actor I don't know where you got that from, but I said I just tripped like a huge sign I'll tell you who I got it from, I got it from our fucking producer Oh, do you want to introduce him? You producer Ben?
Yeah, the Ben Dusar? That's the men The man, the poet laureate, the hoss, Mr. Positive? Mr.
Positive? Wow, okay. Birthday Benny? Sure.
The tiebreaker, the fuckmaster, Hello Fennel, our finest film critic? Wait, how Benny? You're going a lot What was the one we came up with last week? So can we Benny?
Remember, look, if it doesn't- it's been a couple weeks since we recorded it If it doesn't like caption our brains and the fans don't tweet it at us a lot I feel like it hasn't survived, Darwinism, right? Like it just didn't make it I hear something like what Ben? I don't know We can't make these catch rages, I mean these names happen Like they were all organically created Oh, but here's one we came up with on a Terminator 2 episode that has stuck Dirt Bike Ben. Oh, God.
That is pretty good. I feel like we didn't delve into it in the Terminator 2 episode enough Just how obviously Ben was young John Conner in the 90s And still kind of is, but like it's dirt bike, you know, listen in a public enemy What else are you doing? You were swiping candy bars from the, you know, Wawa? I don't know Ben, come on Yeah, shoplifting, I had a slingshot, cool stuff Yeah, he was a mix between Bart Simpson and John Conner Yeah, well, but John Conner and Bart Simpson are there inextricably linked I looked up to both of them, so Ben, what did you do with your slingshot?
Why would you have a slingshot? I thought I was a lot of things babies I think. Yeah, no, it's not good. Oh, no.
Really? Oh, did you like shoot at cars like on the highway or something? Yeah, I mean, we would shoot rocks onto the highway and Yeah, you know, we would shoot rocks at each other Sometimes to just have fun. Oh, God.
Oh, it's pretty dangerous stuff I'm still here though, baby. You're still here. That is true. That is what's not true.
You are not Professor Kresby. Never. And people keep on saying God, it's tough because the audio is so crisp and I go, don't. Last week we did our crazy fucking time jump head fuck.
Oh, yeah, we did our performance. You mean it for the abyss? No, what are you talking about? Yeah, no, for Terminator 2 where we acted like...
Oh, yeah, right. Oh, no, it's for the abyss we acted like we hadn't already. Well, I'm gonna save the nickname. But people said God, Ben's performance was so crisp in that.
And it was like, don't even... Okay, don't. Yeah, then he had... Jesus.
He's graduating to certain titles over the series. Many series. Bruce Ben Kenobi, Kylo Ben, and say Ben and John Lohan. He is say Ben.
Say Ben. I like it. Democracy reversed. Rigged.
But yeah, the abyss we pretended we hadn't reversed it yet. Right. Listen back to our wonderful archive. If you like any of this bullshit we're doing, I can't amend it.
Everyone look. Jack... Oh, I already forgot. Jack Castor.
Jack Reach House. Never Pod Back. Here we are. We're gonna talk about these movies that I feel like even to this day, especially the first one is just kind of largely dismissed, right?
It has its fans. Yeah, it's the equivalent of an under siege movie. It was a studio $60 million big A-list star. It was just more unusual because it came in 2012 when there's less of those around, especially people like Tom Cruise.
And everyone at the time was like, what the fuck is this movie? Like this feels like, because Tom Cruise, when he picks a movie, it always sort of feels like an event, right? Whether it's good or bad, he makes a strategic, like, choices where it's like, you're gonna get an annual Tom Cruise movie and it's gonna mean something. And Jack Reach, you're kind of felt like a toss-off on its face.
Right. You know what it was like? It was just Tom Cruise with a leather jack in the car. What is this movie?
And I remember there were, like my friend Alan Seppenwall, who's a TV critic for hip-hop. Great Alan Seppenwall. Loves the Jack Reach, right? Uh-huh.
Yeah, go ahead and bring your bagel. You're faster. Um, wait, you mean this bagel? Yeah.
I mean the bagel do, sir. Pretty Sir Bagel? No, no, no. Alright, stop.
Jack Reach, I heard the certain television. And I heard this one. I'm not a bagel. Can you just say bagel, hey?
They're bagged bagel. Go on. Um, I heard it from him and I think I heard it from a couple other fans of the books. Tom Cruise, he's all wrong for Jack Reach.
Jack Reach is supposed to be like, six, five, like this kind of hulking guy. Like he's supposed to be huge and really imposing. He's supposed to be a physical threat. Like, if you saw him, you would be scared.
Exactly. And the shadow sort of, like, you know, precedes him. I remember the trailer for Jack Reach would drop. And it's just that scene in the first movie where he's about to fight all the guys.
And he's like, just to be clear, you wanted this. You know, and it's one of those, it's kind of like a take in or I mean, well, we should talk about that. This is in sort of that broad genre of like, don't fuck with him movies, right? But I mean, it just seems so silly in the trailer.
You're like, look, I get the Tom Cruise's in action, sir. I mean, I, I, come on. Like, they're not going to be scared of Tom Cruise. Like, this is silly.
Well, but back up a little bit. They're 20 Jack Reach reports, right? I think 21 really. I think 21 maybe just came out to coincide with the release of this.
Yeah, maybe let me. There's a new one that just came out right now. I just, I love the titles and we find the book series. Yeah, but they're a series of like, you know, essentially like airport paperbacks.
21, which is called Night School is coming out next month. Oh, yes. There have been 20. The last one was called Make Me.
Jack Reach, or Make Me. They are essentially though, like they're like, you know, airplane, like, you know, beachy kind of like that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
It's much like James Patterson or, you know, a sugraft and you know, they kind of, they pump him out maybe once a year. Yeah, it's a once a year. Now it's at a twice a year pace almost. It's about a once a year.
But this is the character Lee Child is found. Absolutely. He's kind of like his Sherlock Holmes. You know, it's a guy you just want to place in different situations, different cases.
And he's got his sort of milieu in his world that he lives in. The physical presence is a big part of the books. Yeah, one of the most, one of the most, one of the most, one of the most, one of the most, one of the most, is that Lee Child is a British author and for some reason decided with this theory. He's written other things.
He wanted like this character to be American. He wanted it to be a former military policeman. And like he wanted to write about like the Midwest and you'd be like, you know, this small town kind of vibe in the US. I don't know.
So there's a weird sort of fetishization there. What it also is weird that like most people don't even know how a military policeman works. And Lee Child is like, no, no, no, former military. Yeah, right.
Like he's working outside of jurisdiction. That's what I love about these movies. I mean, because like, I don't know how fucking I mean, it's like a crime is committed within the, you know, under on the US Army, then sure, like the military cops investigate. And then there's like jags who are like military lawyers and they go to like court marshals and stuff.
But like, nobody, it doesn't matter. It's what's fun about it. Right? Like, yes, he can kind of do whatever he wants probably and we're just like, yeah, it's probably military cops work, right?
And both of these movies can straighten around. Yes, that's true. Military bases all over America, right? But those movies, both these movies concern cases where the people at the center of them are not on active duty.
Like he doesn't solve cases of things that happen on the battlefield. No, it's like vets doing shit. Often. Yes.
Yeah, absolutely. Lee Child, I guess. The US Army Military Police Corps. Police Corps.
That is what they are calling. I think people have tried to make Jack Richard from a little while just because of something that's successful and goes on for that long is always sort of interest. Absolutely. And I mean, we've seen it before like the long running James Patterson series where it was Morgan Freeman and then the Alex Cross.
And then they tried to reboot it with Tyler Perry. Cross out. But that didn't work. Right.
I'm trying to think of other recent examples of this. Well, these detective novels often weirdly don't translate. It's odd. Like, yeah.
I think it's hard to make the characters as iconic as they are in the series. Sure. You know, because like the iconic part is sort of the structure and like the format of the books. Yeah.
And the characters is able to, you know, they sort of this works better in TV. Right? They're procedural. Yeah.
That's what you're saying. Because there's a pet of nature to it. Absolutely. Tom Cruise takes a liking and it's like, I want to do Jack Richard.
That's my new franchise. That's how it works with Tom Cruise. Even in his Diminish stardom, which I would argue, you know, he's a little bit of a Diminish star. You know, he wants to make something that's going to happen.
Right. Now, like as a counterpoint, Clive Costler wrote Sahara, right? Mm. He freaked out.
He sells the rights. They hire Matthew McConaughey. He shoes the studio that makes Sahara because he's like, this character is important. I mean, he's somewhat autobiographical.
Yeah. Like literally like how dare you cast Matthew McConaughey? Like you're ruining my character. Right.
I was with Matthew McConaughey. Was it his career bottom? Right. You one would expect that Lee Child would have a similar response to Tom Cruise playing Jack Richard because he's physically so different.
Right. No. Totally defended it. I loved it.
He doesn't matter that he's tall. Now he's short. Who cares? Right.
Yeah. He also said, yeah, please. Yeah. Please.
Because you can never use the S word with Tom Cruise. But he sort of said like, look, there are a lot of elements of the character, you know, big part of the focus and just sort of like his precision and that's something that Tom Cruise embodies really well. Sure. And he goes, the size thing is kind of irrelevant.
When you're writing a book, you write whatever the fuck you want. I mean, he's not wrong. Right. But the interesting thing is he said like, you know, there's no one who actually fits the physical specifications of what I described in the book.
It's not a real person. I can name you two actors right off the top. Like logically Jack Richard would be Liam Neeson or Michael Shannon. Uh, are both built like the Jack Richard described in the books.
I guess so. Ooh, Shannon, I guess. Yeah. Shannon actually might be incredible.
I think both of them would fucking kill it. I'm not saying TC doesn't kill it. I think he kills it too. But I'm saying there are two guys who are Academy Award nominated actors, one of whom is a well established action star with his own franchise who totally fits the specifications of what Jack Richard is.
They were like, not Tom wants to do it. Right? Which is fascinating. Now, he makes this film the first film in between Mission Possible 4 and 5.
Uh, yeah, that is Mission Possible 4 had come out the previous year 2012 is not a great year because Rock of Ages also comes out that year. Yeah, he's bad. Cause he's the noise I made thinking about Rock of Ages. He hadn't had a home run for a couple of years leading up to Ghost Protocol.
Ghost Protocol is a huge hit. But before then it was night and day and Valkyrie and Lions for lambs, which were all relative versions of bombs. I think night and day did fine. You know, it didn't make enough money, but it's like a single double.
A single in two doubles. Valkyrie actually, Valkyrie actually did really well. 85 million dollars for a movie nobody liked or saw. And that's where he meets Christopher McQuarrie.
Yeah. Well, that's the key thing that happened there. But also Valkyrie was the first Tom Cruise leading vehicle to not make $100 million in like 15 years, 20 years. Yeah.
You know, so it like did pretty well, but it was still like, ooh, it blends off the rose a little bit. Yeah. Team's got a customer quarry on that who is, you know, a long time collaborator. Right.
But that's like, he wants to work at Bryan Singer. Bryan Singer is my guy who wrote usual suspects. Well, and they had this whole, they had this like boner for the idea that he looked a lot like the real German commander who tried to kill Hitler. They would like put these things online of like their face and profile.
It was like an anti-jacked creature situation. Yeah. They were like, look at them. I mean, it's perfect.
And I remember being hyped for that movie because I had such a good supporting cast. It was like, Rana, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nye, like all these like fun British thesps and Tom Cruise playing Nazis. But then the accents are all off. That movie's not good.
And then of course you're watching it and you're like, oh, they're not going to kill Hitler because I know that because they didn't kill Hitler. And then you sort of realize like, why am I watching this movie? This movie is not interesting enough. I'm going to disagree with you on one point.
That movie is definitely BYOA. And that's bring your own accent. Everyone just talks about what they do. Which is weird.
The opening of the film is like Tom Cruise writing a letter in German. And you hear the voice over in German and then it like prospades into him writing a letter in English. And they're like, oh, so now everyone just talks in English. Yeah, I post that trick.
The first 30 seconds of the movie are like, this is what they should be sounding like. And now we're just going to let everyone talk about what they want to. Whatever. Whatever.
Yeah. The one thing I might disagree with you on is I do think there's a chunk of the movie where they think that they've killed Hitler. Sure. They don't realize that it didn't work.
Right. And I think there's genuine tension in that section of the movie even though you know how it ends. I agree with you. I think it does an okay job.
There's like a 20 minutes to that movie that's kind of cracker. But they probably shouldn't have made the movie. No, it doesn't really matter. This is not Valker cast.
But but. Macquarie's a big deal. He's a big turning point because then he like teams up with Macquarie and safer night and day Macquarie works on pretty much every movie he does from here on. Oh, wait, no, he didn't work on.
Gosh, bro. Yes, he did. What do he do? Here's the thing.
He becomes Tom Cruise's uncredited guy who he brings into work on every script. Okay. I think night and day was sort of shocking. But maybe he worked on that.
But I know ghost pro was the big thing because at the time when they hired Jeremy Renner, the whole idea was passing the tour. Yeah, Tom Cruise is kind of damage good. Paramount still wanted Mission possible to be viable franchise. And so we're going to choose another guy.
And this franchise is going to pass the tour. The script wasn't working. They were under the gun together. He went, I like Macquarie.
We did Valkyrie together, brought him in. Macquarie looked at the script and said, first of all, you can't get rid of Tom Cruise. He's a franchise. This and that.
And Tom Cruise said he totally saved that film. That's cool. I mean, grab bird. Let's not discount the great work of grab bird.
But he needed a script to work with. Yeah. And the script for ghost protocol is some fun bullshit. Right.
Right. Right. Because protocol is a wonderful movie. It's one of the best movies ever made.
Macquarie by his own account was sort of indirect or scale. Because of way of the gun, which cost like a weird amount of money. Right. And he had been writing stuff.
But like one in Oscar very young directed a movie that was really hard. Right. And then, you know, was sort of bouncing around and working on other stuff. It kind of like, it felt like he was maybe a guy past his prime.
You know, like he had his moment and it left. It did feel that way. It felt like he was a flash in the pan. Kind of a Stephen Gagan.
Like somebody who's always going to stick around and polish scripts and, you know, make his money in Hollywood. But it's like he's not going to have another special suspect. And the director thing was a non-starter. Right.
And then Tom Cruise takes this liking to him. He works on ghost protocol. He apparently saves the script, gives Brad Bird the meat to be able to turn into a fine state. Right.
Sure. He gives him the fine cut of beef, the slab of beef that Brad Bird massages. Fucking grilled, you know, pepper crust. Right.
Puts a little holiday. It's on top. And it gives us a fork and knife and we go, those protocol. I would say he gave him some like some pulled pork and Brad Bird somehow turned that into a beef state.
Like I think Brad Bird did. Wait, does that? I think I mean, yeah. Okay.
Let's go. But then Cruise is like, you know what? Let's give Macquarie another shot. He has this way to go.
Jack Reacher. It's sort of a low risk. It's a $60 million Tom Cruise franchise. That's a budget Tom Cruise movie.
Let him direct it. Right. Are rated. Do what you want.
You know, here's your book, hit book, right? You know, like work with that. Macquarie writes it himself. Yeah.
Yeah. And movie open small, but multiplies well and does well enough overseas. We'll do the box. Yeah.
And multiplies to 80 to 18 worldwide. Fine. Not the kind of thing people are excited about at the time. And I think people are kind of just doing the like, you know, I feel like the same, the same murmur about Tom Cruise's career, which is essentially, he's good in the mission, impossibles.
Everything else is kind of by the wayside at this point. Right. But the big thing that comes of it is Cruise is impressed not by the moat that he hires Macquarie, not some other mission impossible, which at the time was also a weird move because here's this real director driven franchise. Yeah.
And here I think everyone was baffled, but most people, including me, had not seen Jack Reacher. Right. And I'd seen Jack Reacher and I was like, interesting. Sure.
And then I, we've argued about this many times, thanks to the Rogue Nations, the best of the five films. I think this was a better book, I think Rogue Nations is fantastic. Love it. And I remember I saw it with no expectations.
All the advertising was, he hangs off of a plane. You know, it's all they wanted. Yeah. You know, it was that he hung off of a plane.
He does hang off of a plane and it's totally cool. There were like five minute commercials in front of your movies. Yeah. We're like, he really hung off the plane and they cut to Tom Cruise.
He sure did. And you're just like, I mean, I had this whole theory that I might even talk about the pockets of the time where they're like, they know the marketing knows the movie knows that Tom Cruise is crazy, or at least that people perceive Tom Cruise as being crazy. So why not just have him be crazy? Oh, yeah, exactly.
Totally own it in a cool way. But like everyone in Rogue Nation is essentially like, fuck is this guy crazy? That's why I think Rogue Nations is the best one because I can texturize Tom Cruise the best. And it's the one film where they finally make Ethan Hunt into a character.
That's pretty cool. So good. Anyway, I like those pretty cool a lot. I think those protocols better set pieces.
I think Rogue Nations is better. You know, two cool. Some people like three best, which is weird. I know.
But now I'm a course back. And now he's, you know, he's doing Mission Possible 6, which is good. Yeah. Yeah.
He's doing Mission Possible 6, which is the first time of the Great tradition. But and now it's gonna become a little more serialized. But he's a guy who has options to his. I worry, you know, because I feel like that's what they did with Quantum of Solace where they were like, that was so good.
We should continue the story right where we left it, right? Right. Like, and I don't know, man. Like, surprise is a key element.
And here's what's crazy for me too is like, then they were like, okay, new thing, Skyfall, and then everyone looks Skyfall and they were like, oh, let's do that again. It would be exactly the same mistake. Except they even made it bigger because they kept the director and everything. Which made sense.
It did make sense to bring Manda's back. Skyfall was special. Like, it made sense. But it also didn't make sense.
Yeah. But the more I was like a power player. I mean, I think everyone's recognized that my quarry is. Now, they should recognize it with Jack Reacher.
They should have. Because I'm like, you know what? I want to watch a fun little movie and I never saw Jack Reacher. And I know some people like it, including Griffin, who love it.
And I like Tom Cruise. I do. I'm sorry. I love him.
I've always loved Tom Cruise. I always will. I know he does all kinds of his art shit. And I know he's involved with religion, quote unquote religion that terrorizes people.
It makes no sense. You don't describe my reaction to that joke. Physical. David did.
It was almost like the home alone face. But the hands were higher up on the face. Yeah, like my, my, my palms were on my own. It was like the monkey doing scene.
I stood back like and like went into a corner. Anyway, paint grimace. This made in his padded room where he looked like rainfield from Dracula. We recorded in a padded cell, essentially.
We do. It's true. David. Yes.
Got an intentional air about you today. Well, I'm more intentional about what I wear day to day. Oh, I lean into pieces that feel easy comfortable and put together. I'm sure you could get those from anywhere.
Oh, quince. Look. I'm really. Oh, he's showing him really wearing quits.
Listen, he's showing tag on me. It's been my go to because very clean fits. Very nice fabrics. Yeah.
Don't. They don't feel like cheap fabrics. I hate dirty fits. I hate cheap fabrics.
I am. We're in, you know, it's the weather's getting warmer. I really rely on my quince polo shirts for the kind of like exactly like a formal enough piece of clothing that I can go to the office. But it's comfy.
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Let's go together. Use check to save today offers value for limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Jack Reacher begins with Jai Courtney.
Uh oh. I'm like no, no, no, I don't like Jai Courtney. We've talked about him on this podcast multiple times. It's big headed fool.
Sack of pants and sack of potatoes. It does feel like a classic rookie move. So open your foot. Fuck.
I'm tired again. I don't even feel like it's 2012. So this is probably the start of Jai Courtney's Hollywood career. I think good day to die hard to come out that you're right after me.
You know, I think came out right after. I think Jack Reacher was a good day to die hard to have. But this is what I remember. It's his first movie.
It's his first film apart from Stone Bros. He'd been in a thingy as one of the Spartacus shows. This is what I remember is when they announced they were doing a die hard and it was like John McLean and Son. There was a studio short list of actors and it was like five actors who were interesting ideas and who the fuck is Jai Courtney.
Right? James Bedge Dale was on that list. Liam Hemsworth was on that one. I mean fuck that.
The guy I thought was really interesting who I think would have been the choice was Aaron Paul. Yeah, he would have been fun. Because I think that that movie was a piece of shit though and it's probably good to call. But I'm saying if you're going to try to do that, the whole point is don't pick a guy who's an action guy.
That's what was cool about. We've signed your correct. Because the whole problem of the good day that I hard is like, yeah, he's beefier than Bruce Willis. Right.
It should be Aaron Paul who's got chip on his shoulder anyway anyway. When they announced Jai Courtney I was like, who the fuck is this guy. So I remember going to see Jack. Okay, this guy's like, he's like, he's even at the time it was like, this guy's got a dumb head.
He's got a dumb head. He's got a dumb head. I think he is. He's sixth build.
It's his best performance he's ever given. What do you like him in? What do you like him in? What do you like?
I'm weighing in against the water diviner. The water diviner though. That diviner though. Yeah.
No podcast diviner. That's the movie that Russell corrected. Right? Our next major is by the way is Russell.
We're just doing the water. In and out. Because I haven't seen. Yeah.
I haven't seen unbroken. I've seen that. He's not bad in it, but he's not good. He's like, okay.
Yeah. So I've seen him in. He's actually been terminated. I saw the first diver.
I think I did. Well, I haven't seen those. I will say again, I think he would be good in a suicide squad that was good. I think he's kind of he could be.
I mean, whatever. Entertaining in that movie. He plays Charlie in this movie who is an assassin. Yeah.
He is a sniper rifle. Yeah. And he drives up to a parking garage. Takes out a sniper rifle.
Like a wordless first. I mean, like a 10. I mean, it's it's five. I guess it feels so long because it's all told through the lens of his.
His through his scope. And let's talk about lensing, by the way, Caleb D. One of the greats. Oh, I love when we get the D Mac Daddy, giving us the D, right?
Hey, well, they should know great cinematography shot the right stuff. He shot the natural. He shot the passion of the Christ. But here's the thing with KLD doesn't work that much.
No, it's a rare treat when we get the D. I know he's you know, you know, he lends to this year. What rules don't apply. Oh, that's the word made even that alone makes me more excited.
Did you see the trailer for that? I know. The posters. And I was like, Oh, this is about like shadowy Hollywood.
It won't be good, but at least I see the poster. It's like, how are he was this? Sure, weird, but he's gonna get these two cuties to like it. It's the stupidest trailer I ever saw.
I'm hoping it's a movie that's impossible to cut a trailer because the trailers are so unfocused. They're not coherent. He's not an easy director to cut. I mean, no, he's not.
So they've had a heart. He's been editing it. Yeah, who can say what? Um, he'll do great.
We don't get the deal a lot. Love that day. We get his daughters a lot, but we don't get him lens in a big, a big screen. Oh, yeah, yeah.
And already. So we're seeing like, you know, for sort of action programmer. This is you want to know why we're the two friends you want to prove. Show, don't tell who's going to take a sesame speed off your iPhone screen.
Already the fucking cinematographer in this film. It's gorgeous, it's really gorgeous movie. It's really guys. It's really a film that you should see.
Here's the other thing I like about him, you see it in Rogue Nation. You see it in this. Okay. Every cut matters.
Every shot matters. Yikes. Definitely. Puzzle films.
by Kevin Stitt. They're very precise. They're like clockwork, you know? You look at the opera sequence and the Rogue Nation and you look at the opening of this and this very methodical to process the guns, the bullets, the bullets, the loading up.
There's attention, just you know what, here's this big-headed fuck. I can't hear from Tom Cruise, there's no dialogue. Here's some actor I don't even fucking know. He beat Dominic Purcell in Hollywood's big head competition that year.
Finally Purcell got knocked off. It's a Dominic Purcell joke for you guys. Big head weekly. What a big head he has.
Yeah, I can't believe he didn't get cast as big head in Silicon Valley. Nelson Big head Big Eddy. I got you. So from my purview, when I'm watching a movie, I'm like, here's this guy who they're saying's going to die-hearted.
And from your purview watching this movie, you're like, here's this guy I already know I fucking hate him. And you're starting with him and then also it's a cool mystery where it's like, okay, he's, he's just, he's he's but he just starts shooting people. This is a crosswind shot just from the scope of his rifle. Like once he sets the gun up, long silent, no dialogue, the scope of the rifle, you see him like handing across like his promenade.
Yeah, it's the Allegheny River, I think. It's in Pittsburgh, and he's, yeah, he's panning across the pond. He sees like there's people on a bench. There's like a woman walking, like, you know, with like a shopping bag or something.
Like, you know, You know, someone with a baby. And the quarry takes the time because he wants these people to stick in your mind. You're seeing them the size of ants, right? But he dresses them well enough, he gives them strong enough action, he pairs them off, the behaviorally you remember, like, here's the guy in the bench, here's this, right?
And there's like, at least 90 seconds before any bullets are fired. Yeah. We're just like, who's he looking for? There's a crucial thing that he puts a quarter in the parking meter.
Right. So you know he has 15 minutes or whatever. Yeah. Scanning, scanning, scanning.
Who's he looking for? And then he just starts shooting everybody. Yeah. I'm methodically killing everybody.
It's very brutal. It's very good. It seems random. It's very brutal.
Five people. He kills five people. He misses a couple of times, I think. Or maybe just one.
Or does the thing. Right. So, all right. It's great.
We can't just sum up the plots of both of these. No, but the opening is so crucial. Right. So then we go to the detective Emerson.
Right. Wait, David Yellowwell. God, this movie's fucking rolling with a stack supporting cast. You know, I almost said play by Academy Award nominee David Yellowwell.
What about her? It isn't. It's a real bummer. And here's a yellowwell on the rise.
I mean, he's the anti-jicordian. He was this guy who was starting a book person. I was like, who's this a yellowwell guy? Uh, he was on this show called Spooks, which the Americans know as MI5 because they didn't want to call it Spooks in this country.
I understand it which. Which was like a spy show in the UK, that also had Matthew McPhan and Gili Hall as a lot of cool actors. He was awesome on it. Very cute.