Aubrey MaloneJack Reacher: Never Go Back (PG)
Even though he looks about as threatening as Daniel O’Donnell, Tom Cruise manages to dispatch tough guys that look twice his size to their happy hunting grounds time and time again in this old-fashioned Cold War thriller without even working up a sweat.
Despite the action sequences it’s a slow burner, really only gathering momentum in the climactic scene at – appropriately for the time of year – a Halloween parade in New Orleans.
The plot concerns the efforts of Reacher to vindicate the reputation of army major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders) after she’s framed on an espionage charge and also to protect the 15-year-old Samantha (Danika Yarosh), who may or may not be his daughter.
There are lots of subplots about army corruption, drug deals and what have you but the film is riddled with implausibilities. How, for instance, is Reacher, the army’s most wanted man, allowed to wander around the place like a casual tourist without a cavalcade of security men blocking his every move? Would his face not be on every poster in the country? After he goes on the run with Turner, would hers not be too?
Cruise looks tired throughout. This makes it even more incomprehensible that he takes on all the villains (sometimes up to five at a time) so nonchalantly, and often without even the help of a firearm. Actually that’s one of the things I liked about the film. There’s a lot of punching in it, which acts as a welcome relief from the more familiar bang bang – though we get a lot of that too.
Reacher exhibits an almost superhuman ability to absorb pain. After fairly savage tussles which see him thrown up against walls and off buildings, all he sports by way of injury is a little scar on his face like the kind of thing you’d get from shaving.
Danger
He also seems to be able to intuit danger at every turn with his peripheral vision. And of course he greets all his life-threatening scenarios with a quip, just to let us know how super-cool he is.
The chief bad guy is Rhys Ifans lookalike Patrick Heusinger. He seems threatening enough in the early scenes but by the end he morphs into just another cardboard cut-out and is no match at all for our Tom.
The presence of Yarosh (for the sentimentalists) and Smulders (for the feminists) are two more pieces of a formulaic jigsaw. But a massive publicity campaign has been mounted for the film and the presence of Cruise as Reacher – even in second gear – will ensure it’s going to be big box office..
Are Tired Tom’s best days behind him, though? Will future missions become impossible for the diminutive heart-throb? If that’s the case, all that will be left for him will be character roles.
Somehow I can’t see him having the acting chops for these. Daniel O’Donnell as Hamlet, anyone? Aye, there’s the rub.
Good ***