My Review of "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is the sequel to the 2012 movie Jack Reacher. It came out only 3 years after that movie so you can tell that the first movie was pretty well received. Unfortunately the same can not be said for this movie. Although the first movie was a bit formulaic this one goes over and beyond in the formulaic tropes of action movies.

The movie starts off with the scene that looks familiar to those that have seen the Reacher TV series. Though the TV series did it better this one isn't too horrible. I think after seeing how well the TV series did it this felt a little lackluster. Tom Cruise doesn't really have as big of a commanding presence as Alan Ritchson. Still he does have good screen presence and that's from years of acting.

Jack is again this badass vigilante trying to do good in the world. He's saved in that first scene by a woman named Turner. I would say saved loosely because we don't really see how she really saved him. It's kind of an excuse for them to get together. That's a general theme throughout this movie that I didn't really like. There are just weird coincidences and situations that just happen. It's all for convenience so that the story can go on.

When Jack tries to finally meet up with Turner he finds out that she's been arrested in some conspiracy situation that he has to figure out. When he tries to figure out why she's framed for this crime he finds out he might have a mysterious daughter he's never known about.

At this point I had to shut off my brain and just let it go. I continually thought this is going to get better because the first movie was really good. Sadly it kind of just drones on from there.

We get this weird relationship with this long lost daughter of his. I guess it's supposed to feel on brand for him to be a jerk to everyone because he's lone wolf. Still it felt really off and awkward at times.

The big bad guy is someone he never really faces but his arch nemesis is this guy that's supposed to be the equivalent to Jack in terms of skill and expertise. This becomes an alpha measurement competition between the two and we are all pretty aware who's going to win in the end.

Everything is pretty predictable to the point where you know where they're going to go next and what they're going to do. This movie has big studio interference written all over it. You can tell that the big studios wanted certain things in the movie and they just said yes to everything. That's why it feels rather generic and boring.

That's too bad because the first movie was really good and the TV series was really great as well. This movie feels like it lost the Jack Reacher identity. He just felt like a generic wannabe badass guy getting his own movie. There was no real innovations or anything that pushes the envelope.

Overall, I didn't really have a good time with this one. That's too bad because I was actually really looking forward to this one. The worse part of it was that I didn't even see any potential in this movie. It felt totally generic and uninspired. It didn't have anything that could differentiate it from any other action espionage movie. That's why I have to give this movie a 4 out of 10. I hope that we can keep our hopes up for the second season of Reacher.