[rating=3.00]
Jack Reacher was something of a surprise when it first landed in 2012. From all appearances, it was little more than a rote action drama; a thin plot tied loosely together to give Tom Cruise an excuse to run from scene to scene. A second rate knock off of Mission: Impossible, really. Except that it wasn’t. Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie (with whom Cruise has worked magic on the M:I series) was able to infuse the narrative with an undeniable style, elevating it to heights my cynical mind never dreamed. It wasn’t an exceptionally stellar or particularly special movie, but it was, in the end, a pretty good movie. With a meager $60 million budget, that film wound up making $218 million worldwide, proving once again the bankability of its star.
Bankability. That’s an important word, I think, and there’s no denying that Cruise is as bankable as it gets. But Cruise, like so many bankable stars, is always at his best when he’s working with a quality script and a talented director. Jack Reacher may have been a success without McQuarrie, but McQuarrie turned bankability into decency, which explains a lot about the film’s sequel Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.
In the absence of McQuarrie, neither Cruise nor his character have the opportunity to shine with the same intensity as before. In fact, he hardly has the opportunity to shine period. None of the movie does. Instead, Never Go Back becomes the dull, unnecessary movie that its progenitor felt doomed to be, which feels even worse now after knowing how good it can be. Edward Zwick is neither the writer nor director McQuarrie is; nor are his screenwriting partners Richard Wenk and Marshall Herkovitz. That much is immediate.
Lifeless at best, unwatchable at worst, Never Go Back reads like a case study in everything wrong with sequels and the Hollywood system. Gone is the charm that delighted so many in the first movie, replaced here by cookie cutter scenarios pieced together by focus group pleasing antics that barely retain their shape at even the slightest scrutiny. Not even the normally delightful Cobie Smulders (The Avengers) can save this movie from dipping deep into the pits of banality and pointlessness.
Never Go Back finds Reacher, the badass former army nomad created by Lee Child, on the run from the law as he and Major Turner (Smulders) are framed for treason by a private security firm engaging in nefarious dealings in Afghanistan. Through contrivances of plot, they find themselves teaming up with the young Samantha (Danika Yarosh) who may or may not be Reacher’s previously unknown 15-year-old daughter.
That’s about all there is to it and, yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds. Zwick, Wenk, and Herkovitz have thrown just about every conceivable trope, archetype, and convenience at the screen in a clear attempt to hope something sticks, and every effort falls with an anticlimactic thud against the ground, each one more embarrassing than the last. Everything that made the original Jack Reacher surprising and enjoyable has been ripped to shreds here, leaving little but a hollow husk of its former greatness.
There’s clearly the hopes that Jack Reacher can be turned into a bankable franchise, and the success of Child’s series of novels suggests that it’s quite possible. Never Go Back is, apparently, based on the 18th book in the Jack Reacher series. Between the sheer volume of books and the overall quality of the first movie, there’s obviously something enjoyable there. Damned if it can be found here, however. No, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is what happens when bankability overshadows quality. It is, in the truest sense of the word, merely a consumer product, and not a particularly good one at that. Jack Reacher may have once had legs, but it’s limping now. Jack, it seems, might have reached his end.
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is now playing in theaters everywhere.
