‘Never’ not as good as ‘Reacher’ – Cruise does most of his own stunts

This news has been read 4272 times!

What makes an archetypal character like this fun to watch is an unpredictable story, where the audience and protagonist together uncover the mystery. The 2012 film achieved this beautifully, packing action into a compelling thriller that developed the villains as much as the hero.

In “Never Go Back,” the bad guys are one-dimensional caricatures and the lone wolf is driven by protecting a teenager whom he insists from the start isn’t his daughter. This leaves the film riding on its action sequences and the charm of its central characters, played by Tom Cruise and Cobie Smulders. And while they’re incredibly appealing, they can’t do more than the story allows.

Cruise, who has made himself this generation’s ultimate action star, is perfect as Jack Reacher. He’s steely, strong and almost accidentally handsome. The ageless actor does most of his own stunts and effectively uses his eyes to convey his character’s guarded sensitivity.

Smulders, who’s played a small role in the “Avengers” films, proves herself an action star and leading lady as Susan Turner, an Army major who has taken over Reacher’s post in the military police force. Turner is investigating the murders of two soldiers in Afghanistan when she’s removed from her office and jailed on espionage charges.

Protect

Reacher comes to her aid, but another official warns him off, taunting him with a pending paternity lawsuit that claims Reacher fathered a now 15-year-old girl. Reacher denies it, but goes after the girl (Danika Yarosh) anyway. Suddenly, he’ll do anything to protect her.

This contrivance undoes the suspension of disbelief. Nothing about Reacher’s character suggests he’s yearning for fatherhood, and yet she becomes his main motivation.

“Never Go Back” is based on Lee Child’s 18th Reacher novel. The 2012 film was adapted from a much earlier work in the series, so perhaps Reacher’s desire to be a dad is covered in the volumes in between.

The teenager is the pawn in this story as Reacher and Turner try to uncover corruption high in the military ranks. They find that beyond a cover-up of the soldiers’ murders, crooked officials may be supplying weapons to insurgents in the Middle East. The villain appears to be a white guy in a suit with an American flag pin on his lapel, but he isn’t named and doesn’t speak until the film’s third act.

Meanwhile, a trenchcoated heavy (Patrick Heusinger) is tailing Reacher, Turner and the teen. He’s the catalyst for the chases and fight scenes, which director Edward Zwick cuts together so quickly, their grace is hard to appreciate.

Still, there are some breathtaking action sequences, including a chase through New Orleans’ French Quarter that sees Reacher scaling wrought-iron balconies above a bustling Halloween parade on Bourbon Street.

Smulders handles her share of the action and holds her own with Cruise, which is great to see. Turner may be female, but her character’s depth and strength matches Reacher’s. With Smulders and Yarosh on camera almost as much as Cruise, “Never Go Back” doubles the number of key women from the 2012 film. If only the story was as good.

“Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” a Paramount Pictures release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “sequences of violence and action, some bloody images, language and thematic elements.” Running time: 118 minutes. Two stars out of four.

In “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” it’s been ages since Cruise’s character was discharged, but military types keep trying to salute him, and every time someone in uniform calls him by his former rank, “Major Reacher,” he stiffens a little and responds, “ex-major.”

Cruise has been Hollywood’s top gun for the better part of 30 years, taking no fewer than 17 blockbusters across the $100 million mark in that time. But strike the “Mission: Impossible” series from the charts, and his numbers have been way down in the decade since “War of the Worlds.” (The original “Jack Reacher” made just $80 million, barely half of what “The Firm” earned in 1993.) And while Cruise himself doesn’t seem to age from one film to the next, perhaps it’s time we reclassify the one-time boy wonder as an “ex-major” star.

Entertained

Yes, he’s kept us entertained as “Mission’s” Ethan Hunt, but in his desperation to generate another franchise, the actor — whose career longevity owes to a savvy understanding of his brand — enlists director Edward Zwick to help him resuscitate the role that suits his appeal least. Zwick excels at epic pageantry; his previous Cruise collaboration, “The Last Samurai,” matched that quality to the star’s persona. But the helmer has never made a flat-out action movie, and he turns out to be shockingly ill-suited for the sort of terse rough-and-tumble that a Jack Reacher outing demands. Christopher McQuarrie, by contrast, managed to wring an impressive car chase, a high-caliber finale, and several other intense set pieces from his meager source material the first time around (his reward: directing Cruise in “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation”).

Otherwise, Reacher is handily upstaged by the other characters here, most notably his 20-years-younger replacement, Maj Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders, terrific), who looks like a cross between “The Matrix’s” Trinity and Demi Moore in “A Few Good Men,” and who suffers none of the limits on her own personality wattage.

Immediately following a cold-opening reminder of how Reacher deals with corruption among those in positions of authority, the film softens its drifter protagonist ever so slightly via a series of half-flirty phone calls between him and Turner, in which Reacher promises to look her up in the event that he ever makes it to Washington, D.C. (Agencies)

But when he arrives in the nation’s capital, in the very next scene, he learns that Turner has been relieved of her position and court-martialed for treason three days prior. More surprising still, he discovers a surprising detail about his own past: Evidently, an ex-prostitute has filed a paternity claim against him, alleging he’s the father of her now-15-year-old daughter Samantha (Danika Yarosh). And since we know so little about Reacher, there’s no way to assess whether or not the claim is true, except to bring her along.

Indeed, one of the things that makes the character so appealing to his fans is that he has no attachments — he’s an avenging conscience without the Achilles’ heel of socialization. Give him a child, however, and things could quickly devolve into the sort of manipulative melodrama that befell fellow tough guy Jack Bauer anytime his daughter Kim turned up on “24.”

Let’s not forget that Zwick and longtime collaborator Marshall Herskovitz got their start writing for television, which seems to be the primary influence on this strangely uncinematic action movie. Though framed in widescreen and lensed by Oliver Wood (DP on the first three Bourne movies), “Never Go Back” displays none of the style or audacity that lenser Caleb Deschanel brought to the earlier installment. The sequel looks almost grimy by comparison, relying overly on closeups of a star whose range of expressiveness has been limited to two signature moves: a meaningful jaw clench or a well-time narrowing of the eyes. Cruise can still be counted on to frequently sprint on-camera, but here he comes across as a shadow of the star we’ve known him to be. (Agencies)

By Sandy Cohen

This news has been read 4272 times!