Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)

Back in 2012, I really enjoyed Jack Reacher as a surprising find amid the end-of-year fare that December. It didn’t do much in the department of the new, but it excelled in the field of competency and cleverness. Four years later, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back takes a clear and safe path down the middle of the middling road, erring on the side of generic without ever living up to its own promise.

Journeyman Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) roams the country looking to right wrongs, but when he arrives in Washington, D.C., to liaise with Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), he discovers that the major has been imprisoned for espionage. Suspecting that a game is afoot, Reacher strikes out on his own to pursue the truth about Major Turner and about the young girl (Danika Yarosh) who may be his daughter.

Four years ago, it seemed fairly obvious that Jack Reacher was the launching point for a new film franchise – although it seemed very much of a piece with Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible work, Jack Reacher was something of a scrappy American James Bond rather than the polished and unflappable Ethan Hunt. Equally good in a fight or a moment of deduction, there was much to like about Jack Reacher, even if the character wasn’t particularly distinctive in and of himself. But, as they say, he could have been a contender.

Instead, the sequel features Jack Reacher in a very generic plot, a half-hearted thriller in the espionage mystery subgenre, which doesn’t have much in common with the original film, nor does the protagonist actually drive the plot. Indeed, the film might better have been titled Jack Reacher: Ladies Night Out, because the three women – Smulders, Yarosh, and Madalyn Horcher, who plays a sergeant who assists Reacher – end up doing most of the heavy lifting as far as investigation and deduction go. (In fact, I suspect one might enjoy the film more if we think, as I tried to do, of Smulders as playing Maria Hill in a SHIELD-themed spinoff of The Winter Soldier. Henry Jackman’s score here certainly reminds one of such.)

When he’s in action mode, Jack Reacher is compelling enough, but it’s tough to hang a whole film on running/jumping/punching (just ask Pacific Rim), especially when it’s pretty much all that Reacher does of consequence in the film. And it’s a particular shame in this film when there’s an opening scene that introduces the character in pitch-perfect fashion – it’s the opener you’ve seen in trailers for months now, and it establishes the character in fairly succinct order. He’s a ferocious brawler with a sly sense of humor and a head for meticulous planning. Now that’s a character in charge of his own film, and a character who ought to enjoy a long and prosperous franchise.

We certainly get the former, plenty of action shots in which Tom Cruise punches someone so hard he leaves a bloodstain on the wall behind him. As action setpieces go, Never Go Back is probably worth going back, but it lacks the deductive ingenuity that made Jack Reacher such a surprise. Much of those investigative elements are given to other characters, leading one to wonder what Jack Reacher’s actually doing in this movie. Here, Reacher is reduced to following orders (something the character isn’t, I presume, known for doing) and roughing up ruffians who pursue him.

What he doesn’t do is command the screen in the way that he did four years ago. If we’re going to disregard the subtitle’s advice and come back for more in a third outing, let’s not give Reacher a sidekick or a love interest or even a commanding officer. Just turn him loose and let him do his thing. And let’s be smart about it, though “smart” is seldom the operating word in a sequel.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is rated PG-13 for “sequences of violence and action, some bloody images, language and thematic elements.” Directed by Edward Zwick. Written by Richard Wenk, Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz. Based on the novel by Lee Child. Starring Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, and Danika Yarosh.

Jack Reacher (2012)

Somewhere in the aftermath of the infamous couchjump heard round the world, Tom Cruise became a bankable performer with a penchant for entertaining action flicks.  Jack Reacher is the latest in a set of diverting pictures, even if it’s not the most inventive movie you’ll see this month.

Cruise is the titular protagonist, an army cop turned drifter who lives off the grid in order to cherish fully the freedom for which he and his comrades have fought.  After an army sniper is arrested for the killing of five civilians, Reacher comes to Pittsburgh to close an old case and accepts the offer of attorney Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike) to investigate further before running afoul of a criminal enterprise run by the weary survivalist “The Zec” (Werner Herzog).

Christopher McQuarrie pulls double duty as screenwriter (adapting from the Lee Child novels) and director, and it’s apparent that he’s the same man who brought us the script for The Usual Suspects.  Jack Reacher is similarly structured, with small moments (like bullets falling on the floormat of a car) repeated and explained later.  But unlike Suspects, Jack Reacher doesn’t rely on a last-minute game-changing gimmick, opting instead for a more straightforward approach that lets us discover the clues just a few seconds after Reacher does.  The dialogue is snappy, with Reacher rattling off one-liners like an American James Bond.

The plot turns on Reacher’s observations, including a few deductions that might impress even old Sherlock.  And Cruise does a good job as the passive action hero, without much of a personality but with enough natural charisma to carry off the script’s cleverer lines.  Cruise manages to make Reacher an engaging figure without sacrificing the enigma that otherwise makes his character a cipher.

Herzog is a particularly great choice for a villain, with his hoarse whispers conveying menace and malice tempered by his overwhelming ennui.  When The Zec retells his backstory, Herzog’s droll delivery imbues the dialogue with subtle terror that most other character actors would have overplayed or at best managed unsuccessfully.  Pike, though, is unfortunately interchangeable with most other actresses, serving as a generic sounding-board against which Reacher can be exceptionally bright.  Her chemistry with Richard Jenkins, who plays her father, is a success, but she doesn’t do much in the film until she’s cast in the damsel-in-distress role – a shame, since Pike seems to be just shy of the A-list.

In the third act, though, a near-cameo from Robert Duvall proves always welcome.  Playing a grizzly ex-Marine, Duvall is a good combination of “familiar face” with “begrudging sidekick,” turning an action movie trope into a reunion with an old favorite.

Jack Reacher isn’t fantastically inventive, its rejection of flashy stunts and show-off writing meaning it probably won’t be overly memorable in a few months.  This is no Mission Impossible, for example, where the only person smarter than the main character is the screenwriter, who can’t help but show off cleverness.  What saves the film from obscurity, though, is the smart script paired with Cruise’s performance as the hero. 

Jack Reacher is clearly the start of a prospective franchise, to which I say – more of this clever writing done without bombast is welcome.  Jack Reacher is, like Taken, a film that chooses to do well rather than to do flamboyant; if you want flash, stay home, but if you want a no-frills cerebral action film, reach for Reacher.

Jack Reacher is rated PG-13 “for violence, language and some drug material.”  There are several fight scenes and shootings; most are bloodless but still moderately intense.  There’s an F-bomb or two, a few scenes set in a bar, and a mention of cocaine.