I’m the guy you didn’t count on.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

(2016)

(SPOILERS) It was probably inevitable that Tom Cruise’s dedication to his declining “brand” meant Jack Reacher would renounce his stone-cold, death-machine mantle almost as soon as he had found his footing. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it. As other commentators have noted, with nineteen novels to choose from, what were the chances Cruise would pick the one that softens the character up, giving him a potential daughter and (only ever potential) love interest to pick away at his concealed human side?

But then Cruise, amid his scientological myopia, probably thought he was playing safe, to his strengths, despite Jack Reacher getting a sequel based on the slenderest of threads (courtesy of post-theatrical income streams) and the vocal outcry about the half-pint not being of suitable altitude to fill Reacher’s heavyweight boots. He clearly felt he needed to steer the character further off piste from the self-sufficient introvert, which is hardly likely to win him acclaim from Reacher devotees. The first movie was based on One Shot, the ninth Reacher novel, while this takes a flying leap into the eighteenth. But “character development” is the sustenance of the deluded Hollywood star, so playing a stoic, inexpressive knight errant over the course of a series of movies, from a guy who really, really likes to flash that perfect grin, just wasn’t on the cards (you only need to look as far as George Miller and Mad Max to see where Cruise is fatally misguided).

It wouldn’t matter quite so much if there was any real spark to the relationships, but the friction between Jack and wayward teen Samantha (Danika Yarosh; I don’t know her career outside of this, but if she isn’t in real life she does a remarkable job of playing a highly irritating miscreant here – Reacher can count himself lucky he doesn’t turn out to be pater familias), and with his military contact Turner (Cobie Smulders, who does anything but, and is as entirely absent of personality as in everything else I’ve seen her, which to be fair is pretty much Marvel movies). Smulder’s been framed for murder, with a conveniently/

annoyingly tangential plotline regarding Samantha’s possible parentage encouraging an “exploration” of Jack’s difficult loner status (he’s like a Bruce Banner who doesn’t turn green).

For a reasonable stretch, Never Go Back is an effective-enough, serviceable thriller, even given that director Edward Zwick, never that dynamic or invested a director but big on his ineffectual and frequently self-sabotaging Hollywood version of social conscience, doesn’t add much to the proceedings. And, given the bang-up job Christopher McQuarrie did on the original, positively detracts from it in places. There’s little here that couldn’t have been replicated by a TV movie (which surely, after Never Go Back inevitably underwhelms at the box office, will end up as the character’s natural home, minus one wee Tommy boy), and while some of the action is serviceable (notably Jack extracting himself and Turner from military custody, and a sequence on a plane in which Jack proficiently deals with two assassins), others (a one-versus-four fight in a New Orleans warehouse) lack the clear, precise cutting and staging McQuarrie brought to the table.

The plot isn’t really much of a mystery, but the screenplay (from Richard Wenk, Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz) is busy enough that this doesn’t really matter until we alight in New Orleans. It’s at this point that Never Goes Back curls into a ball and admits defeat. The pace slackens, and the assembled clichés of characters are confirmed as exactly and as unflatteringly thin as they are, co-mingling with similarly unsatisfactory plot developments, ones that come from the plot bible of idiots required to do idiot things in order to imperil themselves (usually reserved for horror movie protagonists). Such that Samantha, who is so incredibly streetwise and a chip off the old block (despite being not really) in her can-do skills, manages to be stupid enough to repeatedly blunder into situations where she can be traced or hunted down. This is TV movie writing, but TV movie writing of 20 years ago (or more), complete with a snarling henchman (Patrick Heusinger, entirely one note, making you long for the charisma of Jai Courtney in the original: Jai Bless) whose entire motivation is to make Jack feel pain like he’s never felt before, and other such twittery.

Also on hand is Robert Knepper as the budget-driven B-baddie, who has so little screen time, Zwick and co probably thought it pointless to try and replicate the surprise success of Werner Herzog last time. Or maybe they were afraid any one with substance would overshadow Tom? Knepper’s the former general in charge of a rogue private military outfit (is there any other kind? I guess the operatives are just following through with what they were taught in the regular army), the easy go-to of a studio with an insufficient blank slate of bad guys these days (it’s them or Russians, since who cares about offending Russians; on the contrary, it appears to be actively encouraged!) As such, Zwick can rest assured his movie is vaguely about something: opposed to the privatisation of the military, and by inference the incremental corporatisation/capitalisation of all public services (one might take this as a Democrat stance, but we know Hillary is in favour of all those things and then some); after all, that $600bn+ per annum is money well spent, isn’t it?

How is Tom faring, in his mid-50s and attempting to look a decade younger? Well, he pulls it off, depending on how moisturised he is and the un/flattering nature of Oliver Wood’s photography for the shot in question (it varies); Cruise has a testing time ahead, as he doesn’t have a good face for aging with character. He’ll just end up looking doughy.

Which is a by-the-by, but indicative that, aside from some cool, no-shit-taken violence (it’s a little worrying, unless he meant it in some kind of untranslatably ironic sense, that Child has “done a fair amount of headbutting. It’s an awesome manoeuvre”; way to go, dude!), there’s little that leaves an impression character-wise, certainly nothing (M:I at least gives him daredevil stunts to perform) that would encourage understanding of why he’s seized on this as only his second “franchise”; one can only assume it’s down to fear of diminishing star status. We can be thankful at least that, when Jack threatens to break Heusinger’s arms, legs and neck, he actually does exactly that, even if Zwick’s too wet to really get into it.

Cruise has a reteam with Doug Liman next year for American Made (it’s always iffy putting “America” in a title; Mena may have been no more illuminating – it covers some of the same terrain as Narcos – but is far less generic) and The Mummy, which I’d be far more intrigued by if an inexperienced writer-turned-director wasn’t calling the shots. But who knows, maybe Cruise has him sussed; it worked out with McQuarrie and then some. Zwick, though continues going his less-than-bold, ineffectual way, dealing out forgettable features wherever he treads.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

The X-Files 8.7: Via Negativa I wasn’t as down on the last couple of seasons of The X-Files as most seemed to be. For me, the mythology arc walked off a cliff somewhere around the first movie, with only the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile after that. So the fact that the show was tripping over itself with super soldiers and Mulder’s abduction/his and Scully’s baby (although we all now know it wasn’t, sheesh ), anything to stretch itself beyond breaking point in the vain hope viewers would carry on dangling, didn’t really make much odds. Of course, it finally snapped with the wretched main arc when the show returned, although the writing was truly on the wall with Season 9 finale The Truth . For the most part, though, I found 8 and 9 more watchable than, say 5 or 7. They came up with their fair share of engaging standalones, one of which I remembered to be Via Negativa .

Schnell, you stinkers! Come on, raus!

Private’s Progress (1956) (SPOILERS) Truth be told, there’s good reason sequel I’m Alright Jack reaps the raves – it is, after all, razor sharp and entirely focussed in its satire – but Private’s Progress is no slouch either. In some respects, it makes for an easy bedfellow with such wartime larks as Norman Wisdom’s The Square Peg (one of the slapstick funny man’s better vehicles). But it’s also, typically of the Boulting Brothers’ unsentimental disposition, utterly remorseless in rebuffing any notions of romantic wartime heroism, nobility and fighting the good fight. Everyone in the British Army is entirely cynical, or terrified, or an idiot.

Isn’t it true, it’s easier to be a holy man on the top of a mountain?

The Razor’s Edge (1984) (SPOILERS) I’d hadn’t so much a hankering as an idle interest in finally getting round to seeing Bill Murray’s passion project. Partly because it seemed like such an odd fit. And partly because passion isn’t something you tend to associate with any Murray movie project, involving as it usually does laidback deadpan. Murray, at nigh-on peak fame – only cemented by the movie he agreed to make to make this movie – embarks on a serious-acting-chops dramatic project, an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s story of one man’s journey of spiritual self-discovery. It should at least be interesting, shouldn’t it? A real curio? Alas, not. The Razor’s Edge is desperately turgid.

It’s not as if she were a… maniac, a raving thing.

Psycho (1960) (SPOILERS) One of cinema’s most feted and most studied texts, and for good reason. Even if the worthier and more literate psycho movie of that year is Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom . One effectively ended a prolific director’s career and the other made its maker more in demand than ever, even if he too would discover he had peaked with his populist fear flick. Pretty much all the criticism and praise of Psycho is entirely valid. It remains a marvellously effective low-budget shocker, one peppered with superb performances and masterful staging. It’s also fairly rudimentary in tone, character and psychology. But those negative elements remain irrelevant to its overall power.

My Doggett would have called that crazy.

The X-Files 9.4: 4-D I get the impression no one much liked Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), but I felt, for all the sub-Counsellor Troi, empath twiddling that dogged her characterisation, she was a mostly positive addition to the series’ last two years (of its main run). Undoubtedly, pairing her with Doggett, in anticipation of Gillian Anderson exiting just as David Duchovny had – you rewatch these seasons and you wonder where her head was at in hanging on – made for aggressively facile gender-swapped conflict positions on any given assignment. And generally, I’d have been more interested in seeing how two individuals sympathetic to the cause – her and Mulder – might have got on. Nevertheless, in an episode like 4-D you get her character, and Doggett’s, at probably their best mutual showing.

You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) (SPOILERS) Hitherto, I was most familiar with Jeremiah Johnson in the form of a popular animated gif of beardy Robert Redford smiling and nodding in slow zoom close up (a moment that is every bit as cheesy in the film as it is in the gif). For whatever reason, I hadn’t mustered the enthusiasm to check out the 1970s’ The Revenant until now (well, beard-wise, at any rate). It’s easy to distinguish the different personalities at work in the movie. The John Milius one – the (mythic) man against the mythic landscape; the likeably accentuated, semi-poetic dialogue – versus the more naturalistic approach favoured by director Sydney Pollack and star Redford. The fusion of the two makes for a very watchable, if undeniably languorous picture. It was evidently an influence on Dances with Wolves in some respects, although that Best Picture Oscar winner is at greater pains to summon a more sensitive portrayal of Native Americans (and thus, perversely, at times a more patr

I don't like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me.

North by Northwest (1959) (SPOILERS) North by Northwest gets a lot of attention as a progenitor of the Bond formula, but that’s giving it far too little credit. Really, it’s the first modern blockbuster, paving the way for hundreds of slipshod, loosely plotted action movies built around set pieces rather than expertly devised narratives. That it delivers, and delivers so effortlessly, is a testament to Hitchcock, to writer Ernest Lehmann, and to a cast who make the entire implausible exercise such a delight.

You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

Look out the window. Eden’s not burning, it’s burnt.

Reign of Fire (2002) (SPOILERS) There was good reason to believe Rob Bowman would make a successful transition from top-notch TV director to top-notch film one. He had, after all, attracted attention and plaudits for Star Trek: The Next Generation and become such an integral part of The X-File s that he was trusted with the 1998 leap to the big screen. That movie wasn’t the hit it might have been – I suspect because, such was Chris Carter’s inability to hone a coherent arc, it continued to hedge its bets – but Bowman showed he had the goods. And then came Reign of Fire . And then Elektra . And that was it. Reign of Fire is entirely competently directed, but that doesn’t prevent it from being entirely lousy.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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