When it was revealed that Tom Cruise would take the character of Jack Reacher from page to the screen, fans were apprehensive. Reacher, an ex-military police officer in a famous series of suspense thrillers, is described as 6’5″ tall and weighs between 210 and 250 pounds. Those measurements clearly do not correspond to Cruise’s slimmer body type and 5’7″ height.

T.C., on the other hand, wants you to know that what he lacks in size he makes up for elsewhere.

“Firstly, I’m very sensitive to it,” Cruise told Empire magazine. He claims that series creator Lee Child, who saw and approved of Cruise’s reading, informed him that Reacher’s towering stature was “was just one element to his character” and not the beginning and end of the character.

“Reacher’s size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way,” Child stated in response to the fanboy outrage.

“This is Lee’s book and Lee’s character,” Cruise said. “Him giving me his blessing is what made me do it. If he hadn’t then I wouldn’t have done it.”

The actor, who will next be seen in the fourth installment of the “Mission: Impossible” series this winter, says that he is a tremendous fan of the character and knows what it takes to play him.

“Reacher is such a great character,” he said. “He doesn’t have a cell phone, he doesn’t have email. He’s off the grid. He pays for things in cash.

“People look at things through the prism of the colours of their life, but Jack Reacher does things the way we want to sometimes. In that sense he’s sort of a Dirty Harry, a James Bond, a Josey Wales.”

Even if fans object today, Cruise can rest certain that the guy who invented Jack Reacher is confident that the proper decision was taken.

“People think we should have had an actor that looks more like Reacher is described in the books,” Lee stated earlier this year. “First of all there aren’t any such actors, so it’s much more a question of which actor has the talent and screen presence to create what Reacher does on the screen, and that really comes down to finding the actor with the most talent.”

Furthermore, the villain in the film version of “One Shot” will be German director Werner Herzog, widely known for directing and narrating documentaries such as “Grizzly Man” and “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” And, for the chance to see a fight between the critically renowned German director and Tom Cruise, Jack Reacher could definitely afford to lose a few inches.

In the fall, One Shot will begin filming in Pittsburgh.