The Bam-Bam World-Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher-Never Go Back  (A Film Review)

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Jack Reacher-2 Never Go Back, starring Tom Cruise, 2016

Strangely, or maybe not so strangely if I thought for a moment about the circumstances under which I have watched them I have been running the rack on adventure, what I call bam-bam movies, for all the shooting, killing, maiming and general mayhem that can be done in two or so hours. That rack now includes an aging (but probably still ladies’ man handsome) Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher, version number two. And as bam-bam movies go this one was not too bad, at least it had a decent story line to augment the seven kinds of hell each side put each other through. Maybe too having a female version of Jack Reacher as his companion and a side story about his possible paternity of a wayward young girl helped push this one along.

Here’s the play, here is what makes this one a better than okay second version of the saga of lone wolf, irascible, listens to his own drummer by one of the last of the pure good guys Jack Reacher who is good with his fists, his legs, his eyes and his assortment of weaponry generally taken from the bad guys after some dispute resolution (okay, okay after being beaten the hell out of or killed in action). Jack, ex-Army, an ex-Army officer of legendary stature, who still has it comes off the hitchhike road long enough to help that female Jack, Major Turner, commander of the 110^th MPs, Jack’s old command, who needs help in figuring out who killed a couple of her subordinates in Afghanistan while they were investigating missing or displaced arms caches.

Jack figured, ha ha right, to take a pass on the help except two things happened-that fetching Major had been arrested for espionage out of the blue and he was named in a paternity suit of a wayward fifteen old girl whom he may or may not have fathered. So off the road our Jack comes and off come the gloves early on too as people, nefarious people hired by the head guy, an ex-general, of a private mercenary operation which was in deep financial trouble and who needed to keep the fact that it wasn’t about the missing arms that they cared about but the many kilos of heroin from the poppy fields of sunny Afghanistan that they were hiding in the arms caches which would get the operation well again.          

 Of course to set the framework for the maimings and mayhem to come Jack had to get himself, the good Major and that potential daughter out of harm’s way. Naturally the CEO of the mercenary operation was not going to tackle Jack by himself so he used his supply of mercenaries headed by an ex-Special Ops guy who despite his retirement from those kinds of assignment still had the scent of the hunt in his blood. The chase was on-the chase that would lead as it always does in these vehicles to a solo mano y mano fight at the end between the two real antagonists. But along the way he, and the Major, take out what must have been the heart of the mercenary operation. Hey even that alleged daughter played her part with a few nice moves to keep us guessing that maybe it was in her Jack-derived DNA. In the end the bad guys took it on the chin, and everywhere else. In the end too despite Jack’s furrowed brows of worry about that could be daughter she turned out not to be his. Which once again left our Jack free as a bird on the hitchhike road that seems to be his fate-until the number three version comes up.