Jack Reacher: Never Go Back- Review

“Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” is the second installment in the "Jack Reacher" series based on the books by Lee Child. The film stars Tom Cruise and Cobie Smulders, with Edward Zwick, the director of the Academy Award winning, Glory, taking on the director’s chair.

“Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” begins with a beautifully choreographed action scene where Reacher helps take down two corrupt local sheriffs. He then proceeds to go to Washington D.C. to meet with the military official whom he had helped in the past. The official, who is Reacher's successor, following her sudden, abrupt retirement from the Military Police. She is only referred to as Turner. However, when Reacher arrives in D.C. he finds out that she has been arrested for a heinous crime. The story then progresses with Reacher breaking her out and their ensuing journey.

To start off, the plot has some areas where more efforts could have been made to further intrigue the audience. For example there are many points in the film in which it seems that a certain scene was missing which could have led to much more of an interesting plot for the story. Moreover, this film's story is egregiously cliché, and every outcome is easily predictable. However, as stated briefly before, the action sequences in this film are exciting and thrilling, but far too short and small-scale. In addition, the set of supporting characters are incredibly small, which in many cases can work, however, the antagonists are disinteresting and make lousy efforts to pursue the trio which further leads to a frustrating aspect of the film.

On the note of characters, no actor, besides Cobie Smulders who portrays Turner, plays their role well. Tom Cruise's presence as the protagonist also demerits this film because Cruise manages to play the same typical action hero that he has embodied for his past action escapades.

All in all, “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” gets a 5/10 due to the subpar storytelling and the performances from the actors. I would say that this film is not a "must-watch" but it is a decent movie to go to the theater for. Despite its negatives, it is still mildly entertaining, so it is not the worst.