Sequel Month - Mini Review - Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

Well, sequel month is drawing to a close

And since we started with Tom Cruise, let’s finish with him too, this is Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

Released in the summer season of 2016, this movie made a modest $160m on its 60m budget but has not been critically favoured, with only a 37% rating on rotten tomatoes and a 6.7 on IMDb. Here are my thoughts

I reviewed the original Jack Reacher back in 2015 and I was not kind to it, in retrospect I was incredibly harsh, having come off a long run of Tom Cruise movies and picking up on certain repeating trends.

This movie unfortunately does have a lot of the same tropes

Tom Cruise has a love interest that prominently features ü

Tom Cruise is on the run from the law for at least a portion of the movie ü

Tom Cruise is exceptional at what he does ü

Tom Cruise starts off as a bit of an asshole ü

But maybe the plot adds something new to the mix, it’s based on a popular novel, so maybe there’s something.

Jack Reacher returns to the military base he operated with in DC to see someone who’s been helping him close a human trafficking ring. Unfortunately, he finds she’s been arrested for allegedly dumping military secrets. Jack’s sure it’s a setup and investigates further, in the process finding out he might be a father.

Soon framed for murder (business as usual), it’s up to him, Major Susan Turner (Colbie Smulders) and his alleged daughter, Samantha Dutton (Danika Yarosh) to outrun the law and mercenaries and uncover the truth of a shady business doing shady deals with captured US weapons.

I’ll give the movie credit for a few things. One, there’s more daytime scenes that in the last movie, the movie’s just more colourful in general, the climax doesn’t take place in a dull quarry, instead being on the streets in the middle of the a festival and on the rooftops. This is a welcome change for me.

Second, both Major Turner and Samantha have uses other than being the people Reacher has to rescue. Whilst they could never relegate both of them to supporting characters given their role in the plot, giving both of them a chance in the spotlight is most welcome

Third, Samantha served as an interesting way to ground Reacher. Reacher had very little to fight for in the first movie, just another generic love interest that he'll ultimately walk away from, but that movie was more about proving someone else’s innocence but whilst that element is still there there’s still an element of survival.

But, no, it’s far from a perfect movie. Samantha can get a little stupid at moments, the way of finding out Jack’s not the father feels kinda forced and the most important thing, the dialogue is far from stellar. It’s pedestrian, nothing particularly springs to mind, and this is particularly a problem with the villains, who are given much more to work with.

Once again, there are a lot of details about the main mercenary of the villain faction that are left out. It seems like he’s sort of a dark mirror to Jack but we know so little about him, it makes it more difficult to care. The other villains are more standard and their overall scheme relatively standard as well.

Overall, I like this movie more than the first one, it’s less serious, although not a lot less serious, has some happy moments, more colour, some more characters for Jack to bounce off of and of course some terrific action.

Rating 65/100