In honor of today yesterday’s DVD/Blu-Ray release of Jack Reacher (much better than most people gave it credit for, in my bro-pinion), the residing publicist reached out to see if I’d be interested in interviewing the stunt driver who worked with Tom Cruise on the movie, Joey Box. Naturally, I jumped at the chance. How could I pass up the opportunity to interview a guy who sounds like a Soprano’s character?

“It’s actually the name I was born with, but yeah, I get that a lot,” Joey Box told me, sounding like a guy who gets that a lot.

I reached Joey Box by phone a few days ago as he was in the middle of some paperwork.

VINCE: So how did you originally get into stunt driving?
BOX: I had been a stunt man in motion pictures for 25 years now, and doubled many actors over the years. And, you know… as a stunt man you start out mostly hitting the ground, doing stunt falls. Unless you’re a racecar driver and you start out that way. But for the most part, driving’s something that you evolve to.

I don’t know what Drive world I was envisioning where stunt drivers are plucked from the motorcycle spheres at the Schenectady County Fair, but I was hoping for a better story than “it’s something you evolve to,” no matter how true it might be. Here’s the thing about stuntmen, plus a broader generalization about people who do crazy shit for a living: to them, it’s not crazy shit. To them it’s a job, and for a lot of them, talking about it is about as fascinating and you or I talking about filling out TPS reports. You kind of have to take them outside themselves, because in their world crashing cars is pretty banal.

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“Sometimes I just take the seat off and ride for hours.”

Welcome to this week’s installment of Your Mid-Week Guide to DVD and Streaming. Our beloved Morton Salt is currently nursing a hangover after attending the Metropolitan Museum’s Gala as Sarah Jessica Parker’s merkin. In the meantime, I’m going to recommend a bunch of movies for you to watch this week and then talk about at your next parent-teacher conferences.

This week’s streaming pick: Hemlock Grove on Netflix. I know it’s not a movie, but I just started watching this series and eventually I’d like to have other people to complain about it with. So watch it and then we can pretend that we’re experts together. [Vince's Note: Screw Burnsy, watch Top of the Lake so we can whine about how everyone mumbles.]

On DVD and Blu-Ray this week:

Safe Haven
Mama
Jack Reacher
Steel Magnolias (2012)
Norman
Starlet
The Oranges
Mighty Fine
The Assassin’s Blade
If I Were You
In the Hive
Revenge for Jolly!

Now let’s get to the meat and potatoes.

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The movie that’s currently being marketed as TOM CRUISE: MIDGET SUPERSPY is actually a pretty clever pulp crime story from the writer of The Usual Suspects with Werner Herzog playing a bad guy. Oh, did you not know that? It’s probably because Paramount thinks you’re eight, and the movie you saw being advertised was TOM CRUISE, 50-YEAR-OLD HARDASS, BEATS PEOPLE UP BECAUSE THE MILITARY! And that’s best-case scenario, assuming you even got past EASY GAY JOKE: THE FILM.

Get it? The title sounds naughty.

“Jack Reacher” is not a title. Jack Reacher is the franchise the studio wants to build, Paramount’s marketing department like a badly written character spouting his motivations out loud instead of dialog. Raiders of the Lost Ark, First Blood, shit, even The Bourne Identity – those were titles, people calling them “Rambo” came later. More than just crappy branding and presumptuous marketing, “Jack Reacher” is symptomatic of a mindset stuck in the days when you could just put a big star like Tom Cruise’s name above the title and every Joe Sixpack and Charla Cheesesnack would rush to the multiplex from all around to throw money at you while it snowed cocaine. Only it’s not 1985 anymore. You actually have to sell what you’ve got. And what you’ve got ain’t James Bond: Musclecar Edition. And thank God. The world needs another invincible secret agent franchise like Tom Cruise needs extra large muscle tees.

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This Week in Posters was postponed last week, but now it’s here! I suppose it’s kind of a “last week in posters” now, but better late than never, right? Don’t answer that.

First up, Michael Bay’s Pain and Gain. Okay, this is a pretty fantastic poster. Not that I imagine it’s very difficult to communicate a Michael Bay plot in a single image, but this one pretty much nails it. A couple a dudes, just gettin’ pumped and shredded in front of old glory. It brings a tear to my eye. Still, asking Mark Wahlberg to play a bodybuilder and then casting a guy opposite him who’s six foot five is borderline cruel. Regardless, I’m excited to see The Rock and Marky Mark get the same borderline-porny Michael Bay treatment as the Transformers girls. I’m envisioning a nice peekaboo shot up Wahlberg’s weightlifting shorts like the Megan Fox car scene while he’s doing so wicked tricep extensions. “Hey, Dawnny! You seen my chawklit flavahed mass gainah?” (*swooping crane shot of washboard abs*)

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After the jump, it’s the new, full-length trailer for Jack Reacher, directed by badass Usual Suspects screenwriter Chris McQuarrie (his first since the underrated Way of the Gun) and starring Tom Cruise. The most interesting thing about it is that Werner Herzog plays the villain, something he was born to do (“Za stoopeedity uff za common cheecken eez overwhalemink”). The least interesting thing about it is… well, pretty much everything else. I love McQuarrie (even though he most recently wrote The Tourist and Valkyrie) and I know Jack Reacher is something of a beloved pulp novel hero, but honestly, how many more badass military guys on the run from the government do we need? BE CAREFUL, TEAM, THIS MAN IS DANGEROUS. Aren’t we like six Bourne movies deep by now? And if there’s going to be a protagonist who talks sh*t to bad guys over the phone, I’d just as soon it be Liam Neeson or Mel Gibson. Tom Cruise isn’t really the type of guy who intimidates you by being some gruff, ex-military hardass. If anything, he’s the type of guy who strongarms you into some kind of painfully-direct timeshare presentation with his uncomfortable sincerity. “Fine, fine, I’ll take a free personality test, Tom, just stop looking at me like that, Jesus.”

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