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Thursday, March 28, 2024

At the movies – ‘Jack Reacher: Never Go Back’

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If you’ve seen a movie with Tom Cruise in it from the past 15 so years, I guarantee you’ve seen Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.

The second film based on the best-selling Lee Child novel series is about as shoot em up, action-y as the genre allows. As a thoughtless action flick, it gets the job done.

As an acceptable sequel to a pretty solid novel adaptation, it fails. It’s fast and it’s mysterious but, unfortunately, doesn’t bring the same swaggering grandeur of the first movie in the franchise to the screen thus leaving us pining away for what could have been.

Tom Cruise does what he does walking around looking mean, punching bad guys in the face. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy watching Cruise beat people up but where the fighting and chases in Jack Reacher (2012) got your heart beating, they fall flat and dull in this uneventful sequel.

Director Edward Zwick, who expertly helmed Blood Diamond in 2006 crafts this unsatisfactory follow up in such a way as to ignore all specks of taste and originality that made the first one flow.

This leaves us with a movie abundant with tropes and clichés and lacking a proper villain. The missing personality, overt attempts to humanize the seemingly heartless, renegade ex military Jack Reacher result in an dull follow up to the 2012 original.

Good for filling an empty Saturday night, bad for exploring the intricacies of a compelling cinematic, character driven narrative.

I give Jack Reacher: Never Go Back 2/4 stars

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Ben Sanchez
Ben Sanchez
Ben Sanchez is a recent Metea Valley Graduate. He is both an avid moviegoer and writer.

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