Fists fly but plot fails in the new ‘Jack Reacher’
‘Never Go Back’ never takes off
Jack Reacher loves diners, whether he’s wrecking people in them or just having a hot beverage. And he’s kind of like a cup of generic black coffee: That first swig is a kick, but man, the taste doesn’t last.
Tom Cruise’s drifter hero was a highlight of the surprise 2012 guilty-pleasure action movie that wore his name, but the sequel Jack Reacher: Nev
er Go Back ( out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters nationwide Friday) is a major step backward with an A-list actor in a C-grade military thriller.
Directed by Edward Zwick ( Glory), the two-fisted tale this time finds Jack looking to meet up with Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), an Army major who commands Jack’s old militarypolice unit. (His anti-authority streak didn’t mesh long term with higher-ups, shockingly.) He helps her out with various cases and has a flirtatious way with her on the phone.
When he finally shows up in D.C., he’s walking into a heap of trouble. Susan has been arrested for espionage after two of her soldiers are killed overseas, and when Jack starts digging around, he gets hauled in, too, and is framed for murder. If that’s not enough, an Army lawyer tells Jack he has been named in a paternity suit regarding a teenager he never knew he had with a woman he can’t remember.
Things pick up when he starts punching people, breaks Susan out of jail, gets his possible daughter, Samantha (Danika Yarosh) — since the rumor gets out that she’s his child — and goes on the lam. They’re pursued by bad guys all the way to New Orleans, where a convoluted plot involving a private military firm, black-market weapons and drugaddled veterans gets in the way of the simple joy of Jack taking out a guy in an airplane bathroom or Jack crashing into things driving a speedy MP vehicle.
The early scenes in which Jack and Susan semi-swoon about having a first date show potential heat, but that goes cold once they hit the road. Smulders does well with the action scenes, yet the bickering between Susan and Jack quickly grows old: She doesn’t want to be treated like a woman, while he’s being overprotective about her and the kid, tripping over himself in the process.
Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels, gets a fun cameo as a TSA agent and Patrick Heusinger is solid as Jack’s chief foe, but the movie completely wastes Robert Knepper’s talents by casting him as a forgettable, onedimensional villain. The beauty of the original Jack
Reacher was that, for the most part, it wasn’t really his movie. He was a supporting character of sorts: When there was injustice afoot, Jack blew into town, beat up people, saved the day and then moseyed off, maintaining a nice sense of mystery.
Child has written 20 of these Reacher books, so the franchise could have a long life. But if bullets and bats are giving way to hugs and chats, then sorry, Jack, let’s never go back.