Tom Cruise Learns How to Be a Father in Action Sequel ‘Jack Reacher: Never Go Back’

Aryeh Harris-Shapiro

The original “Jack Reacher,” despite its box-office success, didn’t reach its potential. Neither does the first sequel. “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” ping-pongs between winking schmaltz and over-the-top seriousness as the title character (Tom Cruise) tries to put down a group of evil military contractors while dealing with his toughest challenge of all: fatherhood.

The first entry did have a few elements working to its advantage, namely an impressive supporting cast and an elegant setup that played into writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s strengths. The sequel trades in McQuarrie for “Blood Diamond” director Edward Zwick and “The Equalizer” scribe Richard Wenk.

But more than its cinematic merits, more than the Lee Childs books it was based on, the success of the “Jack Reacher” franchise can be traced to the purity of the platform it provides for Tom Cruise as an action star. Intensity, confidence, and physicality are the building blocks of Cruise’s star persona, and the Jack Reacher character distills them all into a stripped-down, brutal package designed to make Cruise as close to a superhero as possible without putting him in spandex. Reacher’s appeal is his antisocial competence, the way he repeatedly proves correct his rock-solid conviction that he’s the smartest man in the room.

That type of self-sufficient loner can be difficult to plot around. Like the first film, “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” opts to toss him into someone else’s story.  Unlike the first film, which smartly used Reacher’s obsessive curiosity (another Cruise hallmark) to drag him into its mystery, the sequel simply opts to toss him a love interest. Enter Cobie Smulders as Major Susan Turner, who helps Reacher break up a human-trafficking ring in the film’s opening minutes. The two have never met, but they hit it off over the phone and arrange a dinner date. However, when Reacher arrives in Washington DC, he learns that Turner has been accused of treason and takes it upon himself to investigate. The movie’s requisite evil military contractors frame him for murder, so he breaks Turner out of prison and the two go on the run to find answers.

Except that isn’t the emotional arc the film really cares about. Turner and Reacher don’t solve any mysteries and they certainly don’t ignite their romance. The two never so much as touch affectionately, they just hop around the country punching people until they surrender the clue that leads them to the next location change. Occasionally, they have to earn the trust of nervous witnesses by asking questions multiple times or just outright demanding that the witnesses trust them. Whenever the film can’t be bothered to reveal something organically, Reacher simply knows it, as if he has the film’s plot summary in his back pocket. The entire contractor story wraps up before the film’s real climax, a chase scene entirely dedicated to Reacher’s relationship with Sam (Danika Yarosh), a girl who may or may not be his daughter.

The relationship is cute, but the contractors only target Sam to get to Reacher, who’s only hunting them on behalf of Turner, a near-stranger. The film’s emotional foundation is fundamentally flawed, and the viewer will have disengaged from Reacher’s ragtag family unit long before the film hits the reset button and sends its hero back out on his lonely road.

“Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” releases nationwide on Oct. 21