Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
It's back-to-basics for Tom Cruise – and a lot
of running – in this formulaic sequel.
Perhaps
Tom Cruise should have heeded the sentiment of the
title of his new film: never go back. The first Jack Reacher
instalment, cannily
titled Jack Reacher, was a thing of
beauty: a meticulously tooled thriller that played on the mythos of its
eponymous hero, a former military cop who emerges out of the shadows to
see
justice done. One never saw him coming: he just happened to always be
in the
right place. Here, that gift is bestowed on a nameless assassin
(Patrick
Heusinger) who invariably seems to be one step ahead of Reacher in a
familiar
plot involving trumped-up charges, corrupt officials and decommissioned
munitions.
Of course, Reacher can always look after himself but there’s a chink in
his
armour: a 15-year-old girl (Danika Yarosh) whose mother claims Reacher
is the
father.
Edward
Zwick, who previously directed Cruise in The
Last Samurai (2003), is an efficient
filmmaker and he keeps the plates spinning in an agreeable fashion. But
the
material he has been handed – from a script he co-wrote with Richard
Wenk and Marshall
Herskovitz from Lee Child’s novel – is painfully formulaic. While the
proceedings
are refreshingly old-school – there’s an awful lot of running down
streets,
across traffic and over rooftops – the rest is old hat. In the hope of
consummating a telephonic flirtation with a Major Susan Turner (Cobie
Smulders), Reacher is appalled to find that she’s been locked up on
espionage
charges. And even without knowing what a tall glass of water she
happens to be,
Reacher smells a rat. As a blind date, it provides more adrenalin than
your
usual night of passion and with a rebellious teenage girl thrown into
the mix,
it proves to be quite a tryst.
Jack
Reacher remains an engrossing protagonist – he’s really
good at filtering peripheral information and repackaging it as vital
data – but
Cruise seems a tad more wooden than he did the first time round. Cobie
Smulders
lends decent support as his smart, high-kicking cohort and Danika
Yarosh (think
of a teenage Patricia Arquette) is not bad as the thorn in their
romantic side.
But the maxed-up fisticuffs and familiar action scenarios (there’s even
a chase
through a parade in New Orleans’ French Quarter) reduces the material
to the
decidedly routine.
JAMES
CAMERON-WILSON
Cast:
Tom Cruise,
Cobie Smulders, Aldis Hodge, Danika Yarosh, Patrick Heusinger, Holt
McCallany, Austin
Hebert, Robert Catrini, Robert Knepper, Teri Wyble.
Dir
Edward Zwick, Pro Tom Cruise, Don
Granger and Christopher
McQuarrie, Screenplay Richard Wenk,
Edward
Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, from the novel Never
Go Back by Lee Child, Ph
Oliver Wood, Pro Des Clay A.
Griffith,
Ed Billy Weber, Music
Henry Jackman, Costumes
Liksa Lovaas.
Skydance Media/TC Productions-Paramount Pictures.
117 mins.
USA/China. 2016. Rel: 20 October 2016. Cert. 12A.