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| Edited By: Bryan Durham |Source: DNA |Updated: Oct 21, 2016, 09:00 PM IST
Film : Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Director : Edward Zwick
Cast: Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, Danika Yarosh, Aldis Hodge, Patrick Heusinger, Robert Knepper
Jack Reacher (Cruise), if you recognise him from the first movie (or in case, you forgot) is former Major with the Army's Military Police Corps, who loves to move around, by his own admission and take down criminals and dispense justice his way. He still keeps in touch with his old military unit and over the years, builds a fondness for the new Major, Susan Turner (Smulders).
The two promise to meet and when he finally does, it's too late. She's been arrested for espionage and is being kept at a high-security prison. Convinced that Turner is innocent and is being framed, he sets out to help her clear her name.
He manages to break her out of prison, despite her reluctance and the possibility of death facing her, only to run into another problem, finding out the truth about and keeping safe a 15-year-old, Samantha Dayton (Yarosh), whose mother has filed for child support, claiming that Reacher is the father.
Easier said than done? Well, Jack seems adept at getting out of tricky situations and he does manage, pretty well, when he's by himself. He finds Turner to be a formidable ally, but that Dayton is slowing him down. Furthermore, there is a hunter (Heusinger), a merc-for-hire, who wants Reacher and Turner dead more than anything else.
There is a hidden hand and there are people high up involved in a cover-up that seeks to implicate both Reacher and Turner. The bodies pile up and the action continues till its logical conclusion
Cruise is producing this film. So you know he isn't holding back. But here's the thing. He lets Cobie Smulders take centrestage and in a Akshay Kumar-esque move gives her enough screen time and a moment where she tells him off for treating her like a woman, that she's better, not just as good as him or any other man. We second that. Cobie deserves a movie of her own, sometime soon. She is a star in every sense of the word. She has languished too long in Avengers and How I Met Your Mother hell to not command her own film. The film's feminist credentials aside, the action at close quarters is well-shot and choreographed. The screenplay, while terribly predictable, is entertaining enough to keep you in your seat.
Well the first five minutes of the movie are compressed in the first few minutes of the trailer (the sheriff arrest scene in the beginning at the diner). As action/chase/espionage films go, this film doesn't tax your brain too much, follows the mould of the first film pretty closely except that in this one, the proceedings are so Bollywood-ised, you wonder who the bigger dolts are -- the Military Police or their shadowy enemy. The end fight, while a little too stretched, is a bit disappointing. Also, it answers the question: Is Jack Reacher a daddy now? Not that you will care, though.
It's a no-brainer for Tom or Cobie fans. Flaws and all, it still reaches out to you and drags you along for the ride.
