Mysteries abound on our planet. Why did Homo sapiens prevail over Homo neanderthalensis? Who will decode the Zodiac letters? Why is Kate McKinnon such total comedic catnip? And now, thanks to Tom Cruise, we have another: Why in creation is Jack Reacher: Never Go Back showing in IMAX?
To actually shoot a film in IMAX isn’t just some eh-why-not decision — it requires bulky and expensive cameras, it costs a lot of money, and there aren’t a whole lot of screens around to show it. This is why hardly anyone does it. (Christopher Nolan used it in Interstellar, and The Dark Knight Rises also had a few flagship scenes; JJ Abrams and Zack Snyder have dabbled as well. Clint Eastwood‘s Sully is notable for being arguably the first major motion picture shot almost entirely on IMAX cameras.)
But there are also IMAX pretenders, shot on regular film but projected onto the giant screen regardless. Star Wars Episode III is one. Having just watched the advance screening of Cruise’s Jack Reacher sequel in IMAX, it sure looks to be another.
And this is strange, because Jack Reacher is about the last film I’d expect to merit the ten-story treatment. It has no special effects to speak of; no sweeping expanses or shiny alien worlds or majestic spaceflight or men in capes swinging from rooftops.
The original didn’t, either. I liked the original Jack Reacher film, the way I might like finding a classic boombox at a garage sale or dropping an LS1 into a V70. Underpromoted and underappreciated, it was a tidy, gritty, old fashioned and workmanlike little picture that punched considerably above its weight, a solid genre piece in a hard-nosed genre we don’t see much of anymore.
This sequel, though, falls short.
Cruise reprises his role as reserved tough-guy Reacher, a modern-day drifter with a military police resume, savage street-fighting takedowns, and a deep respect for the uniform. His itinerant existence is getting over the top here — he’s traded the 1970 Chevelle of last time for hitchhiking around with only the clothes on his back and thirty bucks in his pocket — but he’s still, somehow, not only surviving but helping MPs solve unspecified crimes on federal land (?). He takes a shine to Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders) based solely on her comely phone voice (…) and buys a bus ticket to DC to take her out to dinner (not weird at all). He arrives to find that she’s been stripped of her command and tossed in the brig, and a mystery is brewing — involving arms in Afghanistan, Blackwater-esque security firms, government intrigue, and a possible teenage daughter Reacher never knew he had (Danika Yarosh). Reacher sets out to get to the bottom of all this, thus beginning a — well, the kind of movie your dad would watch, and probably will.
The lion’s share of the film involves Reacher, Turner, and the maybe-daughter fighting with people, running from people, or hiding out in hotels. Director Edward Zwick makes much of every drawn out foot chase, fistfight, and taunting phone call from the villain — who, surprise of surprises, is a nonspecific stubble-faced ex-special forces crony who lacks even so much as a name.
Strip away the seventies-style action (they’re coming, run!) and the one-beat plot, and you’re left with Reacher being an off-grid know-it-all hard-butt, and Cobie doing her level best to inject some modernity into the exercise. (She has a brief scene where she complains about having fought sexism her entire career — but that message didn’t seem to reach the writers, who in the end still relegated her safely to a back up role.) The maybe-daughter looks something like Anna Paquin and is mildly petulant but never really sympathetic, and so there’s not much for Reacher to do but deliver brutal and unrealistic one-hit takedowns to a series of “ex-military” thugs he finds in various spots (chiefly downtown DC and New Orleans — hardly the most inspiring global locations.)
Abundant cell phones aside, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back belongs in another era. It plays like a flipbook of filmgoing memories, the kind of film where characters slink away unnoticed from a shooting scene, disappearing into a crowd; where the good guys spend the whole movie running from the law but all is forgiven as soon as the real bad guy is revealed. A lot of this strains believability, especially today. I mean, Reacher can savagely beat two men in a crowded plane without raising any suspicion whatsoever? Come on — once the cabin door closes you can’t even play Words With Friends without being tossed onto the tarmac and probably tazed.
But perhaps that’s the appeal. In a world of senseless death and “active shooters” — a world where Baltimore street criminals routinely pump dozens of rounds into each and every victim — it’s sad to say it’s refreshing to watch grizzled, macho war machines pound one other in the face for good, honest, salute-the-flag reasons. If only that were our world — and if only Never Go Back did it quite so well as the original.
Haus Verdict: In search of an old-fashioned, low-tech little potboiler that’ll make you long for the time when fists were enough? See the first one.
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back opens Friday October 21.
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Do people still play Words with Friends??