Tom Cruise In 'Jack Reacher' Trailer: Five Key Scenes

Hot on the heels of a divorce that you may have heard something about, Tom Cruise the actor makes a triumphant return and gives Tom Cruise the tabloid fixture a break with the trailer for his new action thriller "Jack Reacher."

Previously titled "One Shot," the new film has Cruise stepping into the big boots of Lee Child's famed vigilante Jack Reacher to serve up a brand of homespun American justice all his own.

Here are five key scenes from the first "Jack Reacher" trailer:

He Doesn't Care About the Law
"Who is Jack Reacher?" you might ask. You're right to be curious, but thankfully the man in the hospital bed near the start of the trailer gives us a general rundown of what we need to know about author Lee Child's most famous character. Reacher was a member of the military police but eventually became a vigilante drifter who wanders the U.S. righting wrongs. The character appears in 17 novels in all, but the film adaptation takes his story and previous title from the ninth book, "One Shot."

He's Not a Hero
Like any vigilante antihero, Reacher has his share of demons. He tries convincing someone that he is not quite a good guy, but "Jack Reacher" will have him taking on a decidedly heroic task — this is a Tom Cruise movie, after all. At the heart of the story, there is a madman murdering people with a sniper rifle, seemingly at random. Reacher arrives in town to figure out who could possibly be behind this string of murders and bring the perp to justice.

He Drives
The trailer starts off with an engine roaring over some logos and a speedometer spinning, and some bloggers have justifiably compared the feel of the trailer as "Drive"-inspired. While neither Ryan Gosling nor '80s-style synth music is anywhere to be found in the "Jack Reacher" trailer, the emphasis is on the mechanical aspects of the character. Reacher's beloved 1970 Chevelle SS, surprisingly, gets almost as much screen time as its famous driver, but as Entertainment Weekly informed us, the car isn't long for this world.

He Stands Tall
Almost all the early press about "Jack Reacher" has focused squarely on the height comparison between Cruise and his character. In Child's books, Reacher stands at a mean 6-foot-5, while Cruise comes in at 5-foot-7. The makers of the film downplayed the height difference, saying the spirit of Reacher would live on through Cruise, but even in the first trailer, the actor is coming up short when compared to the thugs attacking him.

He Didn't Want This (They Did)
Cruise does, however, manage to take all the punks down. We don't get to see too much of Cruise in the first trailer, but we do get a serious beat-down near the end. Reacher single-handedly takes out a group of approaching bad guys, sending a few of them running for their lives.

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