Review: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Never Go Back is the ungainly titled follow-up to 2012's Jack Reacher, one of Tom Cruise's minor blockbusters in terms of profitability and certainly in terms of quality. Never go back to what, one might wonder. Based on this installment, adapted from the 18th novel of Lee Child's durable but disposable Jack Reacher series, the answers include: a watertight narrative, avoiding common genre tropes, and generating any genuine suspense and investment in the outcome of our characters.
To be clear, none of the above failings preclude Never Go Back from resembling, and even sometimes actually being, a very good and entertaining thriller. There's an unrelenting propulsion here that is markedly different from its predecessor. The central mystery is beside the point, serving instead as a fairly stable framework for action sequences that may be unmemorable but get the job done. Cruise himself is less blankly intense here than he was in his first go-round as the ex-major destined to wander from place to place, protecting the innocent and leaving bodies in his wake.
After an opening prelude involving Reacher's characteristic break necks now, ask questions later approach when dealing with corrupt officials, the film briskly establishes a potential romance between Reacher and Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), who has inherited his old job at the United States Army Military Police Corps and with whom he has been conducting a series of half-flirty phone conversations. Hoping for dinner and perhaps a wee bit more, Reacher decides to visit her in Washington, D.C. but is informed that she has been accused of espionage and is awaiting court martial.
Reacher naturally breaks her out of the high-tech prison where she's being held and two go on the run with local cops, military police and an assassin named The Hunter (Patrick Heusinger) hot on their trail. Reacher and Turner know there's a cover-up afoot - something to do with drugs being illegally transported using military weapons; in all honesty, it doesn't really matter - and they're keen on revealing it before more people, including themselves, are killed. Complicating matters is the presence of 15-year-old Samantha (Danika Yarosh), who may or may not be Reacher's daughter and who is predictably both help and hindrance to the man who has always walked alone.
The daughter he never knew he had is such a tired device and Samantha is unsurprisingly used to show that our hard-hearted hero might actually have feelings, which will muddle his killing machine nature. Every so often, Samantha becomes an appreciable source of deadpan comedy as her street smarts and usual teenage extremities flummox Reacher and Turner, neither of whom are the most empathetic of beings.
Their play at being a simulation of a family unit is amusing, but far more welcome and successful is the pairing of Reacher and Turner. Their default natures are to be controlling and commanding, so one can well imagine the sparks that fly from the collision of these flinty figures. Their sweet nothings are terse and pithy exchanges; foreplay for Reacher is observing Turner manhandle an ex-soldier turned junkie for information - look how Reacher practically palpitates with passion. Smulders is certainly a match for Cruise - equal in intensity, athleticism and watchability. She throws her fair share of punches, though is typically sidelined for the final showdown between Reacher and the Hunter.
Unfortunately, Reacher and the Hunter's fistfight is by-the-numbers. Unlike the similar brawl between Matt Damon's Jason Bourne and Vincent Cassel's Asset in this year's Jason Bourne, at no point does one feel that these characters are on equal footing and that our hero might actually be bested. It's a strange and whimpering climax to a generally solid actioner.
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Directed by: Edward Zwick
Written by: Richard Wenk, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz; adapted from the book by Lee Child
Starring: Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, Aldis Hodge, Patrick Heusinger, Danika Yarosh, Holt McCallany
