Even if that was his intention, however, he misses the mark overall. without the exaggerated sense of fun that accompanied those thrill rides. Halfway through the film, as tone deaf soundbites such as 'It's time we stop running and start hunting' or 'Do you want to live? Do you?' piled waist high, I actually gave Zwick the benefit of the doubt that he was deliberately attempting to recreate the too-confident cheese of '80s-era Stallone or Schwarzenegger. It's more that Never Go Back looks so inferior in comparison to its predecessor that its warts stand out like speed bumps in a school parking lot. Why? Because Jack Reacher: Never Go Back isn't terrible, or a painful sit (though fans of the books and the original movie likely will leave disappointed by the wasted potential). His blunt take on Reacher strips the fascinating literary character of his basic skills and wisdoms, intent to lean solely on the man-mountain's physicality (in tediously choreographed fight sequences).

Where McQuarrie was (and always is) meticulous, sweating the small details that make a genre film better, Zwick's style is generic and sloppy. Original Jack Reacher director Christopher McQuarrie has been replaced by The Last Samurai director Ed Zwick, and with McQuarrie goes the calculated suspense, the vicious bite, the cavalier meanness and intimidatingly violent blanket of machismo that wrapped around the first movie. and his former Army base, only to learn that Turner has been arrested, and a growing conspiracy threatens to swallow Reacher, as well.īehind the scenes, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back makes one dramatic substitution that, to me, makes all the difference between success and failure. Intrigued by the voice on the other end of the line, Reacher slowly makes his way back to Washington, D.C.

True, the Reacher books primarily act as standalone stories, but Never Go Back arrives at the end of a loose arc that saw the wandering anti-hero (played, once again, by Cruise) connecting with Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), the new head of Reacher's old military outfit whom he only knows through telephone conversations. Lee Child's Never Go Back strikes me as an odd choice as the inspiration for a second Jack Reacher novel, because - as readers of the series will know - the storyline takes place so late in the character's ongoing history.

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