The Bus Arrives - NFL Black Monday, 2012 - Updated

The annual tradition of bloodletting in the NFL is upon us again. No, not the playoffs, but Black Monday.

This is the day when a passel of losing coaches must stand on the curb and be shoved under the bus by team ownership.

Was it their fault that their quarterback stank or their star players got injured? Who cares? We didn't make the playoffs. Start your engines!

Chan Gailey: his team won 16 games in the 3 years he was coach, and the Bills missed the playoffs for a 13th straight season. The pain Chan Gailey is feeling is offset by the fact that he no longer has to live in Buffalo.

Romeo Crennel: a 2-14 season spelled the end for Crennel after just one season as head coach. I've heard it said a few times that everyone likes the guy. Crennel even watched one of his own players commit suicide in the team's practice facility parking lot. After the suicide, here's what the team chairman said, emphasis mine: "I wanted to be there with the team, with the coaches, to let them know I love them and support them and know what they’re going through, and particularly the guys who were present in the parking lot when Jovan took his life. I know this has to be incredibly difficult.” 1 month later: Boo-hoo. Take a hike, Romeo.

Andy Reid: In 2011, backup QB Vince Young called the Eagles a Dream Team. Michael Vick, fresh from a stint in prison for killing dogs, said the Eagles could become a dynasty. Fast forward less than 2 years and Vince Young is broke and out of football entirely, Michael Vick finished yesterday's game on the bench, and Andy Reid has tire tracks on the back of his shirt.

Lovie Smith: There was one person in America watching Minnesota Viking's kicker Blair Walsh closer than anyone else yesterday, and that was Bears head coach Lovie Smith. Walsh had to kick a field goal at the end of regulation in a GB/Minnesota tie game. If Walsh missed the 29 yarder, the game could have gone to overtime, keeping the Bears' - and Lovie's - hopes alive for a playoff berth. Alas, Walsh nailed the field goal, sending the Bears to the golf course and Lovie Smith to the unemployment line.

Pat Shurmur: Who? I know, I know. Okay, it's like this: there's a team in Ohio called the Cleveland Browns. They play football on weekends sometimes. They had a coach named Pat Shurmur. He is no longer their head coach. But he has company: the team also fired their general manager. Happy days around that head office, huh?

Stay tuned, likely more to come.

Update:

And just like that, we have another victim, compliments of the San Diego Chargers:

Norv Turner: I've always thought that he is the quintessential NFL coach. He doesn't win much, doesn't lose much, he's just very good at staying on the NFL coaching merry-go-round, either as a head coach or a coordinator. Every once a while a camera will point at the sideline and you'll go, "Hey, there's Norv Turner." This was Turner's third team as head coach. Watch for him on a sideline near you soon. Incidentally, the team also canned the GM.

You can't turn your back for a second. Here's another one:

Ken Whisenhunt: Football is a harsh, harsh mistress. The Arizona Cardinals were 4 - 0 at the start of the season. This means head coach Ken Whisenhunt must have thought he'd be employed on January 1st, 2013. Nope. The team lost their next nine games in a row. Whisenhunt and GM Rod Graves got canned a few minutes ago.

Jack Reacher - Review

Starring: Tom Cruise / Rosamund Pike

Writer/Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Runtime: 130 minutes

• Good action sequences
• Tom Cruise still on his game
• Werner Herzog as psychopath
• Chevelle SS

When I heard they were going to cancel the premiere of Jack Reacher because of the shootings in Connecticut, I didn't know if it was the right call or not because I hadn't yet seen the film. Now that I've seen it, I know the producers made the right decision.

Jack Reacher is a good hybrid of an action flick and a detective movie, but the opening sequence will make anyone's palms sweat, as a sniper picks people off one by one in a crowded Pittsburgh park. Watching this opening sequence take place, as body after body hit the ground, it was impossible not to think of what the producers were mulling when they cancelled their premiere: Our opening sequence is exactly what people don't need to see right now.

It doesn't take long, however, to settle into the movie and enjoy it for the ride that it is. It's a fairly straightforward story: did the police catch the right man for the shooting? Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) doesn't think so.

An ex-Army cop, Reacher is a now a tough guy drifting around the US. He shuns the trappings of divers licenses, credit cards, and email addresses. Reacher sees news of the shooting on TV and heads to Pittsburgh to nose around. Reacher knows the suspected shooter from his old days in Iraq, and while he believes the suspect is a murdering scumbag, he doesn't think he's the murdering scumbag in this case. Reacher teams up with the suspect's lawyer and slides into the action movie groove: put clues together, beat people up, put clues together, get shot at, put clues together, drive cars really fast, and so on. What's not to like?

The movie is based on the book One Shot by Lee Child. It's a very popular literary series, which means that Jack Reacher himself could have jumped out of one of the books and played himself on the screen and fans would still have grumbled about him being wrong for the part.

I was on the subway last week and heard a man go on at length at how Tom Cruise could never play Jack Reacher (too short, too pretty, he's Tom Cruise, damnit), while the woman he was with nodded in earnest agreement. Neither of them had seen the movie yet, but they were sure that Cruise could never play that character. News flash: he just did.

It bears repeating that movie makers generally aren't interested in being faithful to a book. They may pay lip service to the idea, but what they really want to do is make a movie that makes money. Surprise, surprise.

The Bourne Identity is probably the best example of this, as screenwriter Tony Gilroy was told to not even read the book before writing the script. He was given the title, an outline, and that's it. Robert Ludlum fans may have been disappointed by this, but the movie cashed in for over $120 million. Book? What book?

Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike

My guess is that producers are a little more careful with subjects like Harry Potter and Twilight, if only because the literary youth cult might storm the gates of the movie lot and hang them for changing a character's hair colour. But for action fare, budget considerations and audience projections mean a lot more than satisfying a bookworm's belief that Jack Reacher should be over six feet tall. All things being equal, if Tom Cruise plays Jack Reacher, then Jack Reacher makes money. If some no-name guy who "looks" like Jack Reacher plays him, then the movie might flop. End of casting meeting.

Besides, all of this ignores two things: Tom Cruise is a good actor, and a very bankable action star. He's 50, but could pass on screen for 35, and his skills haven't slipped. Jack Reacher's action sequences are well done and about as believable as action movies allow them to get. It's been known for a long time that Cruise does all of his own stunts, but I read that in this movie he also did all of his own stunt driving. If that's true, then this guy's a damn good driver. He makes a Chevelle SS walk and talk in this movie and let's face it: any movie that has a Chevelle in a car chase is worth half a look.

The supporting cast is good, too. Rosamund Pike is good as the defense attorney, and the chemistry she has with Cruise is on the money. I was glad to see the script didn't go all the way down Love Interest road, though. Robert Duvall turns up for some needed comic relief, and Werner Herzog drops his director's hat in order to do a turn as a European psychopath. Richard Jenkins is in a few scenes as Pike's father, but his talents are entirely wasted in a part too small for him, both literally and figuratively.

Fans of the Jack Reacher book series may not be entirely happy with the film, but they certainly could have received much worse. See it.