Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)
Directed by Edward Zwick
Years after resigning command of an elite military police unit, the nomadic, righter-of-wrongs Reacher is drawn back into the life he left behind when his friend and successor, Major Susan Turner is framed for espionage. Reacher will stop at nothing to prove her innocence and to expose the real perpetrators behind the killings of his former soldiers.
5 connections found
View:
5 films that influenced Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
What critics say influenced Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
The intelligence level is reminiscent of the worst of the Liam Neeson Taken s.
With Samantha in tow, Reacher and Turner almost create a kind of makeshift family on the run, and as they fight their way through Washington, D.C., and later New Orleans, “Never Go Back” begins to feel more like one of Liam Neeson’s “Taken” movies than anything else.
Samantha ( Danika Yarosh ) is loud and feral, seemingly raised by wolves, and she definitely wins the prize for Most Annoying Action Movie Daughter Since Maggie Grace in “Taken.”
Reacher in the books is a noble knight-errant, but Cruise plays him as a generic tough guy in the Liam Neeson "Taken" mode, with little wit or depth.
So the thing plays about as well as, say, the second installment in the Liam Neeson “Taken” franchise.
The director Edward Zwick tends to sign his name to nominally more elevated material with lofty, serious themes and objectives (“Glory,” “Blood Diamond”).
Directed by Edward Zwick, "Glory" (1989), "Legends of the Fall" (1994) and "Blood Diamond" (2006), who is no stranger to action films, "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" has enough stimulation for two films.
Here, under the straight-ahead direction of Edward Zwick (an old Hollywood hand whose credits range from “Glory” to “Blood Diamond”), Cruise’s Reacher is all business, with just a hint of anger.
The sequel, directed by vanilla-flavored Edward Zwick (“The Last Samurai,” “Blood Diamond”), was written by Zwick, his frequent collaborator Marshall Herskovitz, and Richard Wenk (“16 Blocks”).
In case you haven’t gotten your fill of the “lone samurai” theme with Denzel Washington’s “The Equalizer” films or Ben Affleck’s new “Accountant” or Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills, you can revisit Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher in “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” and, yes, it seems to me we just keep going back to these violent solo warriors.
(See "Man on Fire," "The Equalizer," etc., etc.) Two: The violence in "Never Go Back" grows increasingly wearying, and while waiting for the climactic, thoroughly grueling brawl between Cruise and Heusinger to end, I thought: Really?
Edward Zwick (“Glory”) directed, and he also co-wrote the script, in collaboration with Richard Wenk (“The Equalizer”) and Marshall Herskovitz (“Love and Other Drugs,” “The Last Samurai”).
Without Iron Man 2; there would be no Iron Man Three.
Advertisement
Without Wolverine Origins there would not be The Wolverine.