SEQUEL SETS SOLID PACE
Never Go Back, you say? Why not?
Indiana Jones, John McClane, Han Solo: When action heroes hit a certain age or number of movies (usually 50 or four, respectively), scriptwriters looking for something new often reach into their bag of cliches/tricks and pull out — a child!
Tom Cruise is the right age — 54, though he still doesn’t look it — but his character Jack Reacher is only on his second cinematic outing. Maybe the franchise is aging faster than normal?
In any case, a possible daughter named Samantha, played by Danika Yarosh, is the least of Reacher’s worries in this oddly named sequel to the 38th-highest-grossing film of 2012. (Seems I wasn’t alone in not liking the first one much.) More troubling is that his colleague, Maj. Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), has been imprisoned on charges of espionage, mere hours after agreeing to dinner with the secretive Reacher. No one gets between this man and a date!
And so ex-Maj. Reacher breaks suspended-Maj. Turner out of military prison, making them both fugitives from the U.S. army — and from whatever shadowy organization is killing various officers and pinning the guilt on him.
With a screenplay by Richard Wenk (The Magnificent Seven), Marshall Herskovitz (The Last Samurai) and Edward Zwick, who also directs, Never Go Back rattles along at an exciting pace, as Reacher uses his quick reflexes and sharpshooting skills to keep one step ahead of the bad guys. Or as he puts it: “Time we stopped running and started hunting.”
Turner keeps up with him every step of the way — the two skip past the romantic-tension stage of their relationship and go straight to old-married-couple bickering — while Samantha proves the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree by providing them with stolen credit cards and a bit of 11th-hour badass-ery.
These are standard movie tropes, it’s true, but Never Go Back is notable for the clichés it manages to swerve to avoid at the last second: a fight in a restaurant kitchen that involves neither a frying pan nor a pot of scalding water; a chase through a New Orleans parade that is not Mardi Gras; and one of the few Cruise movies in which he does not ride a motorcycle. (Honestly, even in the far future he’s on a Honda.)
The film is kitted out with a variety of respectable second strings, including Robert Knepper as a grumpy general; Madalyn Horcher as Sgt. Leach, Reacher’s unexpected ally on the inside; Aldis Hodge as Espin, who has a grudge against Reacher but is on the level; and Patrick Heusinger as Nameless, Unstoppable Killer.
All are there in aid of Cruise, who naturally has a producing credit as well as his starring role. But where the first Reacher was a plodding mess (even Werner Herzog as the villain couldn’t save it), this new one feels fresher and moves faster.
And since both are based on the Jack Reacher novels of British author Lee Child — now at 20 and counting — there is plenty of room to continue. Never go back? Never say never.