Never Go Back: Jack Reacher Remains Uncompelling

I'm of the belief that if we do not allow ourselves to be at least a little bit uncomfortable each day, then we will not grow at all. This is part of why I, as a critic and journalist, succumb to franchise fatigue so easily. I want to see something I've never seen before when I go to the movies, and so I am consistently at odds with fanbases around the world who would like to see more of the same. Call our differences LastJedi-itis if you will. And I think that if I had to succinctly state my complaints about Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, they would be of the flavor that this movie is about as ambitious as a grassy field in Kansas. Actually, that's not an entirely one-to-one comparison. At least a grassy field can look appealing to the eye through the lens of a camera, while Never Go Back can't quite seem to be able to do the same. Now, what I say next may come as a surprise to you, but I actually found myself agreeing with the minority sentiment that Never Go Back is superior to the first Jack Reacher. It's a touch more streamlined and intentional than its predecessor, it's more subtle and understated, and the blocking of its sparingly used action sequences is fundamentally superior to the first film in just about every way. And yet, I couldn't escape the sense that this movie was still missing something, something that both it and its predecessor couldn't quite grasp. They're lacking an identity to call their own, a flourish of some kind that would have made them more compelling than they actually turned out to be. I guess Hollywood thinks we like vanilla-flavored movies, and unfortunately, I don't entirely think they're wrong about all of us.

Vanilla is safe, after all.

Like the first film, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is based on a novel of the same name, and seems to try to capitalize on the loose continuity model that Mission Impossible executes so well. The sequel is related to its predecessor in name, world, and character, but is very much its own story. Susan Turner, the woman who was once the head of Reacher's unit, has been accused of treason. It's up to Reacher to prove her innocence - the risks and subsequent consequences of potentially dire methods be spurned. And because writer and director Edward Zwick thinks daddy issues make for a compelling narrative (he's mostly right), an old acquaintance of Reacher's, a woman named Candice Dutton, has filed a paternity lawsuit against him claiming that Samantha - an endlessly mouthy teenage girl - is Reacher's biological daughter. This element makes Never Go Back considerably more personal than the previous outing, and at times, the movie seems to be allowing us to have a level of connection to the characters that the previous one didn't accommodate.

Narratively, I found myself wishing that Never Go Back had been more patient with the reasons for why its plot exists. The reasons for this particular run-and-gun are treated with an appropriate sense of weight - but are conversely given such an inappropriately brief amount of screentime. Luckily, this movie's sharp wit does distract from some of its flaws, and the subtle, understated, but biting sense of humor that this movie contains is put to effective use. The plot progression of Never Go Back also possesses more of a consistent throughline than the first Reacher movie. It doesn't quite match the momentum that top-of-the-line action franchises like Mission Impossible can induce, but it's certainly an improvement on the first Reacher movie in many ways.

Cosmetically, some of the color grading in this movie would benefit from a serious bump. The frame is way too gray, always trying to look serious when all it needs to be is interesting, and there's no getting around the fact that this movie can look washed-out and ugly at times. But I will say that the gunfight sequences in the movie are far superior to what we saw in the first Jack Reacher, landing with greater force this time around in some exciting ways. There's a satisfying use of setup and payoff as well at the end of the movie, and this does some to remedy what is otherwise an offensively inoffensive action movie that would have been far better off trying to offend.

Never Go Back is a mild improvement on the first Jack Reacher. However, it's still not enough. Franchises tend to need a spark to ignite at some point, and even if this movie is far from horrible, that spark is sorely missed here. The movie doesn't distinguish itself enough from other spy and espionage thrillers to feasibly compete with even other, better Tom Cruise films. It's currently approaching midnight as I put my pen to the paper with my notes, so fact-check me if I'm incorrect, but this franchise fizzled after only its second movie, and I attribute this not to some seed of utterly contemptible quality, but rather because of a lack of desperately-needed giftedness. Jack Reacher needed to show us that it could punch on the level of other espionage franchises, that it could be distinguished in an oversaturated genre market. Instead, it only showed us that it could do the bare minimum to live up to the tricks that most other spy movies can do, and this is unfortunate when it needed to be able to show us that it could do so much more.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back - 7/10

Amos 5:6-7