Jack Reacher Never Go Back (2016)

If you've seen the trailer for Jack Reacher Never Go Back you see the essential problem with this film. It apparently has no idea how cheesy it is. The scene in the trailer has Tom Cruise take on a whole crowd of "thugs" then when the local sheriff shows up, Cruise smugly advises him what's going to happen (a phone ringing leading to the corrupt sheriff's arrest), just in time the phone rings and it all happens. The film presents this as if it shows how "cool" Cruise, I mean Reacher, is but instead it just makes him look like he's trying to hard. He's a past his prime movie star trying to see cool and not pulling it off. Jack Reacher has the air of trying to hard to reclaim something that's gone.

The whole film is shot by formerly A-list director Ed Zwick in an earnest approach with little to no sense of self-awareness. The character is a caricature of an action hero (you know the kind that avoids hails of bullets, takes on crowds of attackers in fist fights, and discovers clues without realistic evidence) but he doesn't seem to know just how much of a cliche he is. If there were either (1) a sense of self-awareness, an ironic winking to the audience, of the absurdity of the character, or (2) a realistic word built up to make us believe in the hero's absolute heroicness, we could maybe get on board with Reacher and his super agent coolness. But neither of these things exist in the Jack Reacher film world.

Jack Reacher Never Go Back has all the hallmarks of a vanity project; former A-lister set as star, a cast of otherwise lesser actors who won't steel the spotlight, a conveniently flattering plot to make the star look as good as possible. It has the opposite effect unfortunately. I kept thinking how far Cruise has fallen if this is his attempt to stay relevant.

The title of the film is really more of a warning. Never go back to seeing another Jack Reacher film. It's good advice.

Jack Reacher Never Go Back
Starring: Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders
Directer: Edward Zwick
Writers: Richard Wenk, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz