Reacher 2 Cruising for a snoozing
In the first Jack Reacher film fans of Lee Childs’ many books about the lone drifter dogooder ex-military cop thought Tom Cruise failed to measure up to the physique of the character.
But it was a solid enough action thriller and its director Christopher McQuarrie went on to direct Cruise in his fifth instalment of his longer-established, bigger-money, bigger-fun franchise Mission: Impossible.
The second Jack Reacher film, however, fails to measure up to just about everything — its source material, the expectations of a Cruise popcorn movie, its conspiracy thriller plot, its survivability as a franchise.
Yes, Never Go Back is a bad title but may be good advice.
This time Cruise and a forgettable support cast is directed by Ed Zwick, whose previous Cruise gig was in Taranaki on The Last Samurai. He’s one of Hollywood’s more pedestrian directors and despite outbursts of Cruise-sprint — if you chop the air first, it clearly offers less resistance — the pace of this barely rises above a walk.
It’s the formulaic action flick the previous instalment avoided becoming, with action scenes impressing less for the committed bone-breaking fisticuffs but for the major deja vu of the locations.
Never seen a fight in an abandoned factory, deserted wharf or a restaurant kitchen? Then this is your movie.
And when Cruise isn’t busting chops, the visually dull Never Go Back can feel like a very long television episode of one of those shows with a military acronym for a title.
It starts out with some potential. Supposed loner Reacher must partner with Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders from The Avengers).
She has his old Washington job in the US Army military police. After some flirting on the phone, he turns up in DC to say hello, to find she’s been charged with espionage.
First, he has to bust her out of the stockade. Then, he must locate the teenage daughter (Danika Yarosh) he never knew he had as the goons chasing him and Turner are targeting her too.
Not much happens between Reacher and Turner, with Smulders basically a female Cruise clone and jogging partner as they are chased from Washington to New Orleans to learn the truth about the murder of two MPs under Turner’s command.
Along the way, there’s a fair bit of slipping phones into others’ pockets and surprising them with a call later.
And when Reacher encounters his former military employers, he’s addressed by his old rank. “Ex-Major,” he invariably corrects them.
There’s certainly something ex-major about Jack Reacher just two films in. The first Reacher flick worked well enough. But here Cruise is on a hiding to nothing.