Tom Cruise finds the man in the legend
|||JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK
DIRECTOR: Edward Zwick
CAST: Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, Danika Yarosh, Robert Knepper, Ninja N Devoe, Aldis Hodge
CLASSIFICATION: 13 LV
RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes
RATING: 3 stars (out of 5)
BY THERESA SMITH
NO FUSS, no muss, this Jack Reacher sequel is a very simple movie.
The cinematography is perfunctory (more suited to the small screen than big), the storyline is elementary and the action sequences are brutal.The film starts with Reacher (Cruise) alerting military police to a human trafficking scheme, which is how he meets his replacement at the special investigations unit, Major Susan Turner (Smulders) on the phone.
He hitch-hikes his way to Washington, but once there, he finds Turner has been arrested on charges of treason and he himself is accused of a 16-year-old crime.
Basically, things go pear-shaped from there – there’s plenty of running, a few nasty, bare-knuckled fights and lots of loud gunfire.The action moves to New Orleans about halfway through which adds some gaudy and noisy backgrounds, but mostly the camera focuses on Reacher and the people in his immediate space.
Cruise’s face belies his age, but again, the character’s waning ability to simply snap back from a fight reminds you he is not getting any younger.One of the bad guys tasked with chasing him down proves an able, ferocious fighter, and Reacher’s wincing response afterward again makes the character more believable, even as the plot starts gaining holes. Though the telephone flirting suggests otherwise, once Reacher and Turner have a quiet moment in each other’s company there is not much chemistry between Cruise and Smulders, mostly because she is playing one note and never relaxes.
Forced to look out for a teenager caught in the cross-fire, Reacher actually establishes a greater emotional connection with Samantha Dayton (Yarosh). This is a lifeline for Cruise, who makes a living off playing charismatic characters, but has to hide behind the facade of a book character known for his stoicism for most of the movie.
Reacher’s drifter instinct to not get involved is negated by the obvious imperative to protect said teenager from a fight she didn’t start and Cruise ably proves the character human as opposed to the legend built up in the first film.The score starts riffing off the Bourne soundtrack in the beginning, but quickly turns very bland. Though the last scene actually features a wistful little melody, the music in no way helps to create any sense of urgency or tension. That is left to the bad guys chasing down Reacher and almost beating him to a pulp on a few occasions.
Will he make it out? Won’t he? That, coupled with Reacher’s ever-growing collection of bruises, cuts and visible winces, grounds the story in reality in a way the very straightforward narrative does not. As sequels go, this one gives us more of the same as the first, which, if you choose to watch it, is kind of what you want, isn’t it?
If you liked Jack Reacher, then you will like this.