Directed by:
Edward ZwickCinematography:
Oliver WoodComposer:
Henry JackmanCast:
Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, Robert Knepper, Aldis Hodge, Danika Yarosh, Patrick Heusinger, Holt McCallany, Christopher Heskey, Jason Douglas (more)VOD (5)
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Jack Reacher: Never Go Back follows the title character as he returns to Virginia to meet the head of his former unit. But she's missing, he's being charged with a crime committed nearly 20 years ago, and he may even have a daughter. Making things right will lead him on a cross-country chase to uncover the truth - and maybe even a family. (Paramount Pictures)
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Zwick took it differently and badly. He seems to have abandoned the main strengths of the first one and serves us a second story of an agent with a mysterious past with a minimal portion of insight, which, however, does not so much play the main role, but only in details dilutes the damn serious note, which is itself the biggest criminal cliché in recent times. Unfortunately, even the screenwriting and framing of the story is first-rate Hollywood cynicism and dullness. In other words, you get all the ills that scripts for ordinary action films have, and as a result, all the twists and attempts fizzle out in the end. It's partly saved by the usually top-notch action Zwick has always been good at, but you'll still miss the slow, frantically unedited brawl from the first episode. Cruise is great, the family element is questionable and brings down the overall rating. After the first one, which caused a solid fan breakdown and there was talk of another agent like Bond and Hunt, came a cold shower and who knows what will happen with the third film.
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The first installment struck me as a jacked-up, anachronistic, infantile, moronic bore in which nothing happened half the time. The reason I found the second part to be a successful and entertaining albeit silly adventure surprised me myself, so I'll write it out here as therapy. Because it's the added quasi-family aspect that finally confronts Reacher with some sort of problem that makes him have no time to just wink grandly into the camera at the viewer, who knows nothing can happen to him anyway because he's exactly what he always wanted to be in his fantasies. Whereas the first film threw problems in the hero's path that he is used to solving and was always the boss on his own turf, here his need to solve situations on his own and be responsible only for himself clashes with the need to push the cart together with his supposed daughter and the runaway major for whom he has an emotional weakness. So suddenly he is not the master of every scene, but rather a somewhat unhappy asocial whose whining that it can't be like this, that he is used to being a lone wolf, is actually a necessary apology for the macho first installment, where he gave everyone and everything a hard time. Despite this, he's still that conservative, dreamboat hero of dads raised on Bond movies, whose disjointedness and James Dean-esque loneliness as an American wanderer hitchhiking in a white T-shirt along Route 66 is inspiring in such a distant way that he belongs more in the realm of guy dreams than appealing to a change in lifestyle. Perhaps that's why the film received such unkind reviews around the world when two women and a kind of need for responsibility suddenly intruded on this purely male escapist concept. However, with Reacher still retaining its concept of old-fashioned retro, and therefore appealing to the 40+ audience more than any other contemporary mainstream film, some images of gender progressiveness must be appreciated. Namely, the most intense defusing of an adversary with a rubber hose is entrusted here to Cobie Smulders. Or the scene in the hotel room, where these beautiful, fit people move around in their underwear without arousing any interest, which no one even comments on, it's just taken for granted. A shocking situation for a post-Bond audience. A pretty boy and a pretty girl can be friends or partners. The last positive I need to highlight is the cleverly constructed script. It doesn't really matter what the movie is about, of course, but for example, almost every scene works with more than just one piece of information used to move the plot forward, but usually brings in two or more that will be capitalized on later. For example, the disarming of the two mercenaries outside the diner not only brings the hero information about the organization they work for, but the bruised knuckles from that conflict also serve as major evidence later on to get him arrested. The bond between the Major and Reacher's "daughter" is also built through one teaching the other how to dodge a bullet, both of which we know will eventually be capitalized on later in the story.
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The first installment of Jack Reacher didn’t dazzle me in any way, even though the action scenes were one of the best I’ve seen in the last few months. I tried the second installment to see if anything had improved. And it didn’t. Quite the opposite. There is less action and Jack Reacher is still the same unavailable guy and the worst character Tom Cruise has ever portrayed. And that’s despite the fact that the screenwriter invented a supposed daughter for him and tried to make the second installment a little more personal. It didn’t work and truthfully, it was worse than I thought.
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The first film definitely has its issues (the first half without tension, a number of unexplained things at the end), but so does this one, so I did not really notice any major qualitative drop. Perhaps only Kreamer's musical motif was a bit lacking for me, and the main villain could have been more charismatic. However, Tom Cruise is still convincing, Edward Zwick knows how to do the action and the other scenes, and that made me like the final restaurant unraveling in addition to the night shootout.
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Jack doesn’t waste time. Before the movie even starts, he manages to pacify two guys and bring two more to justice before the opening credits, during which he manages to set up a date with a woman he has only just met. Roughly the first third of the film is a terrific lesson in narrative economy. Neither the characters, who take action instead of making unnecessary speeches, nor the viewers have time to breathe. The only thing that slows Reacher down is the second woman who enters the story, because of whom the protagonist must not only flee from justice and search for the real villain, while at the same time acting as a responsible father figure and giving instructive advice, which does not fit his type of pulp hero at all. Furthermore, the relationships between the characters lack the necessary dynamics due to their weak development and the bland actors who portray them (though the characters are allegedly one of the main reasons the filmmakers chose Never Go Back over approximately twenty of Child’s other books as the source material), so you will have plenty of time to ponder the predictability of the mediocre plot in comparison with the brisk beginning. If you try, you can easily guess how a given scene will turn out. If you try a little harder, you will have no trouble deducing how the whole film will end. As a fine bonus, I welcome the fact that the relationship between Turner and Reacher remains on a professional level (its nature is nicely demonstrated by the fact that neither of them addresses the other’s semi-nudity as they inspect their ragged wounds). The only narrative betrayal, which partially justifies the weakness of the relationship storyline, comes at the very end, when it is necessary to clean the slate and the restore the status quo so that the franchise can continue without disruption. In comparison with the more diligent McQuarrie, Zwick merely fulfilled his commission. A cruel price is paid for this particularly by the interchangeable, quickly and vaguely edited action scenes (only the sound effects provide any kind of orientation), none of which comes close to the bathroom brawl or car chase from the first film. In an era of recycling tried-and-true franchises and making exorbitantly expensive comic book adaptations, I appreciate the fact that someone is taking on a mid-budget 1990s action thriller in which the plot plays a bigger role than spectacular CGI sequences. It may not be so apparent from that how little effort most of those involved put into the attempt to make something worth remembering. Two days after the screening, I’m not sure whether I saw a new Tom Cruise movie or commercials for Washington’s public transportation system and the sports cars that American cops drive. The first Jack Reacher made the most money outside of cinemas (DVD, Blu-ray, VoD). The second one seems to have been intended from the start as a movie to be watched on trains and planes. And that’s a shame. 65%.
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