Jack Reacher sequel falls short of expectations
Three-quarters of the way through Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Tom Cruise is on a plane and about to knock out a bunch of villains when it starts to feel like a flashback from 2011. That was the same year he starred in the film Knight & Day, a romantic-action-comedy film where Cruise beats up a plane full of different villains as Cameron Diaz puts on lipstick in the lavatory.
In Knight & Day, the effect is charming, but by the time we get to this same moment in Jack Reacher, the story is so far gone that any awe-inspiring moment or chance to maybe just say, “Hey that’s cool,” has leapt right out of the proverbial airplane window. It becomes clear that the title Never Go Back — Tom Cruise’s first return to the big screen in almost a year — might unfortunately resonate in more ways than one.
Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures
Twice the action · Cobie Smulders joins Tom Cruise in the 2016 film Jack Reacher: Never Go Back as Susan Turner and Jack Reacher, respectively.
At the beginning of the film, Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) goes on a date with Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders) — a young military woman who he has been helping solve cases remotely from around the country. As Reacher’s calls turn less professional and more personal, the two make tentative plans to have dinner one day. When Reacher finally arrives in D.C., he learns that Turner has been relieved of her duty and charged with espionage.
As Reacher attempts to rescue her, he learns that he can’t get involved because of a warrant out for his arrest. Apparently, Reacher hasn’t paid child support. When he tells the attorney that he doesn’t have children, the attorney shrugs and states a woman with a 15-year-old daughter named Samantha (Danika Yarosh) has claimed Reacher is the father. When Reacher goes to visit Samantha, she quickly skulks away. For the remainder of the film, Reacher struggles to juggle both women as he attempts to clear Turner’s name and hunt down the truth of Samantha’s paternity.
This second installment, directed by Edward Zwick, arrives four years after its predecessor, directed deftly by Christopher McQuarrie, became a relative box-office success and started another action franchise for Cruise, separate from his Mission Impossible series. Yet, while the first Reacher was also written by McQuarrie, Never Go Back seems to suffer from a changing of hands, not only because of Zwick but also other screenwriters.
In the opening scene of the film, an angry police officer balks at the hunched over figure of Jack Reacher, demanding, “Who the hell are you?” Reacher replies, “The guy you didn’t count on.”
Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures
Reach for it · Tom Cruise returns as Jack Reacher in the highly-anticipated sequel of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. The film is based on Lee Child’s book Never Go Back, the 18th installment of the novel series.
Reacher’s promise is enticing, but problematic. The way the story sets up Reacher’s character, there’s never a moment when we don’t count on him, which, of course, shouldn’t be a problem for any other protagonist in any other film. What made the first Jack Reacher so brilliant was the distrust in the lead’s ability to solve the mystery or even end up on the right side of the law by the film’s end. But with all this busy work with the daughter storyline, Reacher loses himself in menial plot development and even further in meaningless dialogue.
But the problem doesn’t end with Reacher’s accountability. Tom Cruise’s near-mythic persona eliminates any ounce of believability throughout the film, beginning with the montage of Reacher hitch-hiking his way across America in the first act. Let’s get one thing straight: Tom Cruise is not an every man — and for however much the filmmakers want Jack Reacher to be in this sequel, they fail, because Jack Reacher isn’t an every man either.
The first Jack Reacher film prided itself on a sleekness and mystery; we never quite knew where or who he was, and by the film’s end, we still sort of didn’t. In this film, all cards are played out on the table by the end of the first act, so what follows feels more like a visually weary cousin of Jack Reacher, where the lead is more driven by his libido than by a true thirst for justice or revenge. The age discrepancy between Smulders and Cruise also serves as a jarring misstep. For all of Smulder’s demeanor and physical prowess (exemplified by the many running scenes throughout), their chemistry just doesn’t work.
The action set pieces, however, are splendid. Save for the final showdown set in the New Orleans French Quarter during Halloween (which reads more like a cheaper version of Spectre’s 2015 opening sequence through Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebration) the action is exciting and taut. A particularly good sequence takes place in the military prison cell as Reacher attempts to rescue Turner by bamboozling a lawyer and playing mirror tricks with several hallways and video cameras. It’s visually just the right amount of interesting, confusing and comprehensible.
In the first film, the District Attorney asks a detective on the case, “How do we find this Jack Reacher?” To which the agent replies seriously, “You don’t find this guy unless he wants to be found.” It’s an iconic moment, emphasized by the fact that Jack Reacher shows up at the men’s office door mere seconds later. Unfortunately, the Jack Reacher in Never Go Back loses himself among all the mayhem, making us wish maybe we shouldn’t have found him again after all.