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Thursday March 28th 2024

Jack Reacher | 2012

Lee Child’s original story, One Shot, was set in Indiana, but the opening aerial view of the wedge-shaped city at the confluence of two rivers clearly puts us in the heart of Pittsburgh.

It’s to the north of downtown that the sniper is firing across the Allegheny River, from the parking garage of the Stanwix Tower Apartments, 625 Stanwix Street.

He picks off his apparently random victims on the Riverfront Walk at the foot of Mazeroski Way, beneath the PNC Park baseball stadium, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

When he’s tracked down and arrested, the sniper’s only response is to scrawl "Get Jack Reacher” on a notepad. Reacher (Tom Cruise) turns up and somewhat unwillingly finds himself working alongside the suspect’s defence attorney, Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike).

It seems, though, that there are people who are out to discourage him from getting involved. The bar, in which Sandy (Alexia Fast) comes on to Reacher and sparks off a fight, is Mario’s South Side Saloon, 1510-1514 East Carson Street.

You won’t recognise the exterior of the bar. When Reacher quickly sees off the five guys with his impressive combat skills, he’s a couple of miles away, outside 1900 Smallman Street at 20th Street in the Strip District – northeast of the city toward the Allegheny River.

Reacher tracks down Jeb, ringleader of the bar brawlers, to a home on South Side Slopes, with terrific views over the city. A false frontage was added to the house, 1016 Fritz Street, which is much smarter than it looks on film.

The (now closed) Sewickley Country Inn, 801 Ohio River Boulevard, Sewickley, became the ‘Three Rivers Motel’, where Jack Reacher stays, and discusses the discrepancies in the case with Helen. Sewickley is on the Ohio River, about 12 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

Fleeing a murder scene set up at the motel, Reacher rams the car of the gang behind the scheme on the 10th Street Bridge, crossing the Monongahela River from South Side Flats, before careering the wrong way through the two-lane Armstrong Tunnel, to emerge on South 10th Street at Forbes Avenue.

He’s soon managed to negotiate Pittsburgh’s one-way system, and coolly abandons his car on 9th Street south of the Rachel Carson Bridge. Evading the police, he melts into a bus queue outside Pizza Parma, 9th Street at Penn Avenue.

Jack and gun-range owner Cash (Robert Duvall) finally catch up with The Zec (Werner Herzog) in the Hoover Stone Quarry, 150 Moween Road, in Saltsburg, about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh.