What The?

I've babbled a little about a few of Lee Child's Reacher series here before, here, here, here and here. Although Child has been writing the series since the late 90s, a movie featuring Reacher hasn't hit the development stages until just recently. One Shot, one of the books I haven't written about, will be directed by Christopher McQuarrie and is supposed to start filming this fall. Reacher will be played by Tom Cruise.

Now, I don't think I ever mentioned this, but one of the things about Reacher that Child made an essential part of his character was his size -- he's six-foot five. Tom Cruise is not; I found a variety of listings online but five-foot-seven seemed to be the most common and I can't imagine that he's taller than me at five-nine. In other words, a brownish-haired dude who's a touch over five and a half feet is supposed to play a blond bruiser who's a touch under six and a half.

When Cruise was first rumored to be in the running to play Reacher, I traded e-mails with a friend who'd introduced me to the series and offered this potential scene: 

Reacher held up his hand. "Just a minute," he said. He walked over to the office couch where a flunky was sitting, waiting to be useful. It would have been a long wait anyway, so Reacher lashed out with a locked-finger death strike, crushing the flunky's larynx and collapsing the artery that led to his brain.

The flunky lurched to his feet, not knowing that he had less than two minutes before his speeded-up pulse would exhaust the blood supply in his brain and cause a fatal stroke. He was too busy worrying about the air he couldn't get through his collapsed windpipe and staggered against the wall.

Reacher dragged the couch -- megalomaniacal bullies were always into big leather sofas like this Lorimar with its solid wood frame and steel springs, each of which could be made into lethal weapons or lock picks as needed, instead of nice easy sectionals -- towards the desk. He missed ottomans.

Reacher stood on the couch and stared at this puffed-up little dictator who thought having a little money made him a big man.

"What did you say?" he asked.

Although One Shot is one of the better Reacher books, I'm not optimistic about this movie, and in fact think it may turn out to be a pretty accurate description of how many Reacher films made by this pair get to the screen: Just one.