100 MOVIES IN A YEAR: #33 Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

This movie sucks shit. The original Jack Reacher isn’t the greatest movie ever made, but it’s fun, moves along at a very brisk pace, and has a great villain. Never Go Back is directed by Ed Zwick, which immediately tells you it’s going to be sentimental schmaltz told in as straightforward and uninteresting way as possible. One of the most damning things I think you can say about him is that Shakespeare in Love was a passion project of his that he tried to desperately to direct. I… am not an Ed Zwick guy.

Jack Reacher is not a compelling character. He’s barely a character, he’s more akin to how James Bond has been described; a blunt instrument. He’s at his most compelling when he’s just a force of nature, not letting anyone in and almost impossible to read. This movie expects us to get to know him, accept that he would charm a woman, to believe that he would be sentimental. Folks, this character is not interesting, he‘s just another fucking bland ACTION MAN. Making things even worse is that one of the main antagonists is ALSO a bland ACTION MAN, only the actor playing him has, I’m going to say… zero charisma on camera. He’s just a generically attractive man he growls. THAT’S what you give us after the insane onscreen magic of Werner Herzog’s nihilist who chewed off his own fingers to escape a Siberian prison.

And as the final indignity, they saddle us with a fucking teen surrogate daughter character. As soon as Jack Reacher starts asking her about her drawings, you know that the fucking movie can’t possibly come back from the insanely boring Hell it’s spiraling down into. Also, the acting sucks in this. I like Cobie Smulders, and that guy from Mindhunters (Holt McCallany) is just incredibly easy to watch (this is not a sex thing, I find him compelling on camera) but Tom Cruise is trying to play two things that simply don’t work together (I keep noticing that he runs with his elbows sticking way out, for some reason), and almost all of the remaining actors look like background performers. What a fucking dud of a follow up to a genuinely fun film. This is like following up Payback with… I don’t, some movie with characters from Payback but it sucks. Payback II: Payback has a teen kid now!