Jack Reacher: Never Go Back | Little White Lies

Jack Reach­er: Nev­er Go Back

19 Oct 2016 / Released: 21 Oct 2016

Words by Adam Woodward

Directed by Edward Zwick

Starring Cobie Smulders, Danika Yarosh, and Tom Cruise

Two men in jackets stand in a dimly lit alley lined with flower stalls and a crowd of people in the background.
Two men in jackets stand in a dimly lit alley lined with flower stalls and a crowd of people in the background.
3

Anticipation.

Struggling to remember anything about the first Jack Reacher.

3

Enjoyment.

Solid and uninspired. You may just want to heed the advice of that title.

2

In Retrospect.

Tom Cruise used to be better than this. Now, we’re not so sure.

Tom Cruise repris­es his role as Lee Child’s enig­mat­ic hero in a sequel that fails to hit the ground running.

Whether he’s evad­ing an entourage of inef­fec­tive hit­men, being flir­ty-pro­fes­sion­al with an attrac­tive female co-con­spir­a­tor, or sim­ply try­ing to con­nect with his is she/isn’t she daugh­ter, Jack Reach­er can’t catch a break. In this enjoy­ably naff and whol­ly incon­se­quen­tial sequel to Christo­pher McQuarrie’s 2012 action­er, our hero is once again depict­ed as a good guy with a dif­fi­cult past, a self-styled ex-gen­er­al turned drifter who relies on his easy charm and keen instinct to squirm his way out of trou­ble. And that’s it. No back­sto­ry, no dis­cernible char­ac­ter arc, no rea­son to keep watching.

Of course, as with Ethan Hunt, Reacher’s appeal lies in his enig­ma, but con­tin­u­ous­ly play­ing to Cruise’s strengths is to ignore those of Lee Child’s lit­er­ary cre­ation. What this film plain­ly lacks is nuance. In one scene Reach­er and Cobie Smulder’s scorned Major track a junkie war vet­er­an to a crack den in New Orleans, where an oppor­tu­ni­ty to do some­thing more with the tit­u­lar pro­tag­o­nist is missed. Giv­en his murky mil­i­tary back­ground, one avail­able read­ing of Reacher’s con­stant snoop­ing and increas­ing­ly para­noid, vio­lent behav­iour is that he is suf­fer­ing from PTSD.

In an alter­nate fan the­o­ry ver­sion of Jack Reach­er: Nev­er Go Back, the lay­ers of Reacher’s com­plex nature might be peeled back to reveal a social­ly mal­ad­just­ed fugi­tive in des­per­ate need of help. Not here though – direc­tor Edward Zwick, abet­ted by co-writ­ers Richard Wenk and Mar­shall Her­skovitz and, yes, even Cruise, makes no attempt to explore the character’s psy­cho­log­i­cal make-up or pro­vide deep­er mean­ing. Indeed, the only real insight we get into his psy­che arrives late on via an odd­ly homo­erot­ic under­tow, when Patrick Heusinger’s chis­elled alpha-assas­sin decides to make things uncom­fort­ably personal.

On a more pos­i­tive note, there’s plen­ty to like about Dani­ka Yarosh’s feisty per­for­mance as Saman­tha Day­ton, despite the fact that she’s sore­ly wast­ed in a tedious dad­dy-daugh­ter sub­plot that’s clum­si­ly shoe­horned in before even­tu­al­ly being resolved in the most anti­cli­mac­tic man­ner imag­in­able. She even gets to deliv­er the film’s best line, at one point repeat­ing an unfavourable descrip­tion of Reach­er as a big hero and a total ass­hole.” Apt, but still a fair­ly weak sub­sti­tute for actu­al characterisation.

After two Jack Reach­ers and at least two too many Mis­sion: Impos­si­bles, there’s a spe­cial kind of view­er fatigue that comes from watch­ing Cruise leg it around after some vague­ly cor­rupt organ­i­sa­tion (in this case a muni­tions sup­pli­er named Para­source) for two hours. As an action star, there’s no deny­ing that he still has what it takes – it’s the rou­tine itself that is sud­den­ly start­ing to look leaden-footed.

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