Film Review: Take the Title Advice in ‘Jack Reacher: Never Go Back’

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CHICAGO – The title of Tom Cruise’s second Jack Reacher adventure has almost prophetic ring to it – but we all would have been better off if the writers, and director and star of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” had heeded the advice. This film seems more like one of those bargain-bin-just-barely-released thrillers than a major studio action movie.

Rating: 1.5/5.0

In his “Mission Impossible” films we’ve come to expect crazy stunts and relentless intensity from Cruise as he runs all over the world. In “Jack Reacher 2,” Tom Cruise brings his steely intensity, but there’s not much else. Instead, we get a cruddy and cheap looking series of modest chase scenes through tax-friendly shooting locations.The first half hour or so is comprised almost entirely of a scenic tour of seedy motels and cheap diners, as the title character hitchhikes among the amber waves of grain of the good ol U.S.A.

Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) is a former Army Major gone rogue, breaking bones and pursuing bad guys. To switch things up, director Ed Zwick – with co-writers Marshall Herskovitz and Richard Wenk – fall back on the lazy screenwriters bag of tricks, and saddle the lone wolf with a teenager (Danika Yarosh) instead. After he breaks from jail a female army major (Cobie Smulders), wrongfully accused of treason, Reacher finds out about a young girl who may or may not be his teenage daughter. Soon all three of them are on the run from a team of dirty government military contractors involved in gun running and other nefarious pursuits.

Continue reading for Spike Walter’s full review of “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back”

Tom Cruise in ‘Jack Reacher: Never Go Back’
Photo credit: Parmount Pictures

Continue reading for Spike Walter’s full review of “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back”