Director: Edward Zwick
Date: 8 June 2018
jamesintexas rating: *
Rarely does a film title implore you to do something that you're readily able to oblige. In this case, despite the good will harbored from the first Jack Reacher film (and my irrational, complete investment in Tom Cruise's work), please skip this second Jack Reacher film which does not really offer much in terms of characters, plot, storytelling, or energy.
I want to start with energy. Tom Cruise plays the world weary ex-military man known for wandering the earth, thumb extended, who is making his way to Washington D.C. to rendezvous with Cobie Smulders' character, Turner, whom he keeps calling from pay phones along his way. I don't remember if this relationship was established in the first film or not, but it seems like a long distance to travel for a bizarre first date of sorts. When Reacher arrives, everyone knows him, but Turner has been jailed for espionage, resulting in Reacher figuring out a way to evade capture himself while also springing Turner from a maximum security facility.
As for character, plot, and storytelling, Edward Zwick has a few hokey tricks up his sleeve by having Reacher sequence out in his mind where someone went who just left a room. There is the possibility of Reacher having a long lost daughter, Samantha (Danika Yarosh) who experiences some heavy trauma before going right back to normal, providing some of the least effective sequences in the film. But she is trying. Cruise seems on autopilot here, not doing as many fight scenes or talking scenes, mostly staring and thinking very hard. He figures out one major revelation, as much as I can figure, by simply looking at something and asserting, "Something doesn't add up" making him a mystical character of sorts. The bad guys are forgettable, with one of them being called "The Hunter," (Patrick Heusinger) as he seems to sit around comfortably waiting for phone calls to do heinous things. A fight sequence on rooftops of New Orleans has some undeniable beauty to it, with the bridges twinkling in the distance, but the film just never really comes together. The first film had a kinetic, revving-engine type of fun to it with some wordplay from Reacher, some unscored car chases, and Robert Duvall. This film, not as much. The title says Never Go Back, but I would go
back to the first film. Never Watch This One.
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