While not quite as impressive as the first Jack Reacher film, Never Go Back is an above average thriller with some inventive action set pieces, and some great supporting characters.

Premise: Former Military Police Major Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) returns to his old army base in Virginia for the first time since leaving to meet up with his replacement, Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), only to discovery that she has been arrested on charges of espionage. Believing that she has been framed, Reacher sets out to expose the conspiracy against her.

Verdict:

Never Go Back is based on the eighteenth Jack Reacher novel, and is the sequel to the 2012 film Jack Reacher (which was itself an adaptation of the ninth novel in the series). The good news, however, is that most of the Jack Reacher stories are pretty much standalone crime-thrillers that can be watched or read in any order. So whilst I would certainly recommend that you watch 2012’s Jack Reacher (because it is a fantastic film, and one of my top ten movies from that year), you don’t need to have seen it to follow and enjoy Never Go Back.

There is much to enjoy in Never Go Back, as Tom Cruise tones down his usual exuberance and charisma to reflect the more emotionally buttoned-down Reacher, who after spending a lifetime of service in the military, isn’t particularly communicative or in touch with his feelings. He is able to build a connection with Cobie Smulders’ Turner due to their shared military experiences, but when his attempts to uncover the conspiracy against Turner put a local teenager in danger (Danika Yarosh’s Samantha Dutton), Reacher struggles to relate to her even as he is forced to take her under his wing for her protection.

“…Cobie Smulders stands toe-to-toe with Reacher as his equal…”

Cobie Smulders, meanwhile, is fantastic in a really well-written role which allows her character to give as good as she gets, and stand toe-to-toe with Reacher as his equal. Hers is a lead-female role that doesn’t put her in the position of merely being a damsel in distress, a femme fatale, or a simple love interest, and Turner could just as easily have been written as a male role. However, by making the character female, not only does the film get to make a point about gender roles and sexism, but it also even calls Reacher out on some of his own attitudes, when Turner points out that what he might see as chivalrous, she sees as patronising. As she reminds him, she has a far more personal interest in seeing justice done (given that soldiers under her command have been murdered as part of the conspiracy), whereas Reacher is just stepping in because he’s always motivated to try to do the right thing.

Danika Yarosh also does a good job with a very difficult role – that of a slightly surly teenager. There’s a fine line between realistically portraying a headstrong teenager, and simply becoming irritating, but Danika Yarosh manages to keep her character on the right side of that line. The rest of the supporting cast is also pretty solid, with special mentions for Aldis Hodge as a Military Police investigator with a personal grudge against Reacher, and Patrick Heusinger as a nameless, ex-military assassin who is essentially a dark reflection of what Reacher could have become.

The action set-pieces have also arguably been stepped up from 2012’s Jack Reacher, with some impressively choreographed shootouts and fight scenes. The second half of the film also relocates the characters to New Orleans, with scenes shot on location, giving the film a lot more geographical scope than the small-town-set first Jack Reacher film.

“…the sequel doesn’t quite manage to live up to the standards set by the first film…”

However, what does unfortunately let the film down is its overall conspiracy, and it’s in this regard that the sequel doesn’t quite manage to live up to the standards set by the first film. For me, what really made 2012’s Jack Reacher stand out from other thrillers were the twists and turns in the central crime mystery, which were so cleverly plotted and well written that not only did I not see the twists coming, but when they were revealed, I kicked myself for not spotting what was starring me in the face all along. In that film, Reacher was first and foremost an investigator who was like a version of Sherlock Holmes that also just happened to be a military trained killing machine. Unfortunately, Never Go Back has a central mystery that is much more predictable, meaning that Reacher is more of a standard action hero than an insightful detective, and given that audiences can pretty much assume from the word go that Turner is being framed, it doesn’t take much imagination to work out who is framing her and why.

It’s for this reason that Never Go Back works as a good, solid action/thriller with some interesting character plot-threads, but it didn’t quite blow me away like the mystery in the first Jack Reacher film did. That said, there is still a tonne of potential left in the character, and all that is needed for a third Jack Reacher film is for the filmmakers to choose a novel with a better central mystery – luckily for them, they still have 19 other novels left to choose from (and counting), not to mention the various short stories and novellas.