Jack Reacher: Never Go Back starts with the titular character (Tom Cruise) roaming the country, doling out his own personal brand of justice. Along the way, he's been getting support from Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders). He goes to visit her in Washington, but is surprised to find that she's been arrested under suspicion of espionage. Reacher looks into the matter, and runs into a government conspiracy hell bent on keeping a very dark secret. Reacher is soon framed for murder, and he teams up with Major Turner to try and clear their names.
The narrative problem with a character like Jack Reacher, who is presented as almost supernaturally competent, is to create a threat that might actually give him a challenge. There just isn't much tension in Reacher facing wave after wave of thugs that have no chance of ever really hurting him. This film gets around that problem by introducing characters that provide surrogate vulnerabilities for the character. It is an approach that comes with a few problems of its own, but the film is able to use these elements to add a thin layer of humanity to a practically inhuman character.
There isn't a whole lot to this mystery. There are stretches where one might even forget what these characters are trying to find out. It just doesn't seem to matter all that much, the various clues and red herrings all just there to give the character a measure of narrative direction. This film is much more about Jack Reacher and the consequences of the kind of life he leads. The film places him in a situation where he is forced to confront the possibility of not being alone anymore, of having responsibilities beyond those that come with his rigid sense of justice.
And that kind of works. If nothing else, the film has characters call out Jack Reacher for his inability to interact with them in human ways. It acknowledges that there are limitations to the appeal of the lone wolf ass-kicker, and asks the character to consider his many imperfections. The film doesn’t really go far enough, and largely defaults to him just seeming infallible. But these moments add compelling facets to the character that sustain him through parts when he’s not just beating people up.
And to be fair, the beating people up parts are pretty well put together. There’s a certainly brutality to the main character that translates into something that feels weirdly grounded even when he’s elevated to superhero status. Tom Cruise still doesn’t seem like the most natural fit for the Lee Child hero, but Cruise remains one of the very best at playing a character that gets hurt a lot. Cobie Smulders has some fun playing a character that’s meant to be an equal to the lead, and though the role eventually fades a bit, the actress manages to convey the strength needed to make it work.
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is a serviceable popcorn flick. It doesn’t really do anything wrong, though one could argue just as well that it doesn’t really do anything exceptionally right, either. It is all just there, the film mostly coasting on the general star power of Tom Cruise and the willingness of people to see him get hurt and hurt others. There are interesting little wrinkles here and there, ones that might point to addressing a general flaw in the stories of this character. But those are still off to the fringes, playing fiddle to a mystery that’s difficult to care about.
My Rating:
