Tom Cruise is not my ideal choice to play Jack Reacher; let’s just get that out of the way.
Reacher is tall, blonde, and physically imposing. Cruise, however
buff, is short, with a more slender build. Reacher is stoic and
reticent. Cruise is a master thespian in the Derek Zoolander school of
acting — he never met an emotion he couldn’t project with a facial
expression. Reacher is calm; Cruise exudes nervous energy.
None of that makes Cruise a bad actor; I actually think he’s quite good in the right roles. (Color of Money, Eyes Wide Shut, Rock of Ages, Jerry Maguire.) Neither does the casting make Jack Reacher: Never Go Back a god movie. It’s an above-average chase-and-rescue procedural. But
will readers invested in these characters be irritated at the way the
story and character is rounded into a more generic form? I don’t know.
Will viewers not at all invested in the book(s), find enough distinctive
elements here to justify a trip to the multiplex when they could just
pop The Gauntlet, Terminator, or Die Hard into their DVD players?
The
film opens with Reacher wrapping up a case and flirting on the phone
like a teenager with Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders). Soon the
drifter is heading to Washington to meet his long-distance crush, but
she’s in prison for espionage and has left orders that he not be allowed
to visit. So, of course, he breaks her out. Along the way to New
Orleans to break up a paramilitary organization, Reacher and Turner
rescue a teen girl who may (not really) or may not (if you knew Reacher
like I knew Reacher…) be his biological daughter. They kick some butt,
they take some names, they form a reasonable facsimile of the family
none of them say they want but each apparently longs for.
In a strange way, the introduction was the part that irritated the
book purist in me the most. Reacher met Turner throughout the events of 61 Hours,
a previous book, and without risking spoilers, I’ll just say that the
emotional bond they formed was posited as a bit more than attraction
wrought from sexual bantering. Reacher, normally closed to the outside
world, opens up to Turner at a key moment, and she sees (or hears) him
at a psychologically and emotionally vulnerable moment.
The first act of the story plays very different if the relationship
is presented as one of curious infatuation rather than as one of a
strong psychological bond borne of shared trauma. The addition of the
kid also comes across as too generic a movie situation. What makes the
possibility of a father-daughter bond more interesting in the book is
that it is a different wrinkle in book fifteen of the series. When added
to the second film in the franchise…well, the character hardly has
enough definition for viewers to understand what parts are against type.
At
one point, an antagonist threatens Reacher by saying words to the
effect of “You think you’re invincible, but you’re not!” This, too, is
wrong. Reacher, by this time in the series, is carrying two scars, one
from shrapnel, one from a knife fight. Both are reminders of just how
vincible he really is. The key component of Jack Reacher’s character is
that he masters fear. When hit, he leans in. He is not without fear (or
any emotion, really), he has simply learned to manage his emotions. For
that reason, the film is probably at its best when the girl asks him,
“Don’t you ever get lonely?” and rather than deflecting the question
with a Cruisish grin, Reacher says, simply, “Sometimes.”
Reading back over this review, I realize it sounds like I hated Never Go Back. I
didn’t. I find myself surprised to be the dissenter on the more
supportive side among my circle of friends. Perhaps my affinity for the
character blinds me to the film’s greater flaws, but maybe it also
mediates against reflexive film critic cynicism. As a liberalish
academic, I probably shouldn’t like Reacher as much as I do. He’s close
to a lot of conservative military stereotypes, sure, but he’s a military
cop first and foremost. That means he’s seen the downside of the
culture he embodies and honors. He realizes the lines between what he is
and what he hunts are very thin, yet he is also remarkably and
refreshingly unconflicted for all that.
There is also some genuine cultural work going on in the partnerships
he forms with women. (Turner in this book, Neagley in some of the
others.) Reacher is literature’s consummate egalitarian, allowing women
to make their own choices. If he’s better than them at most physical
tasks, well, he’s better than most men, too. There’s a wonderful, brief
aerial shot early in the film of Reacher and Turner sprinting across
grounds on the plaza in D.C. She’s ahead of him for a little, then they
are stride for stride, then he pulls ahead. The point is clear, he may
have saved her life, but he didn’t rescue her in the traditional movie
sense…and before the movie’s done, she may well return the favor.
Screenplay credit here goes to Richard Wenk, whose other credits include The Equalizer, The Expendables 2, and The Magnificent 7.
Perhaps he was the perfect choice if Cruise (who produced the film) and
director Edward Zwick wanted to push the franchise in a more generic,
action direction. If so, that’s a shame, I think, because down that path
lies ever diminishing returns. Jack Reacher is still an interesting
dude, but like a figure in a Polaroid picture that’s developing in
reverse, he’s becoming less and less distinguishable from any other mass
of action flesh with each passing second.
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