Jack Reacher Never Go Back is the sequel to the well received first movie, Jack Reacher, which is based on the New York Times best selling books by Lee Child. Tom Cruise again plays the title character of Jack Reacher. This movie was directed by Edward Zwick who Cruise had previously worked with on the 2003 movie The Last Samurai which turned out to be quite an underrated gem so it got me excited to see these two working with each other again.

In Never Go Back, Jack Reacher must try to solve the mystery of who murdered two soldiers in Iraq, clear his own name as well as Major Turner’s  name played by Cobie Smulders all while trying to protect this girl who may or may not be his daughter.

With this convoluted plot it leaves a big story to tell and Zwick does not deliver. Unlike the first movie directed by Christopher Mcquarrie, Never Go Back offers nothing new. With bland action scenes and nothing special with the cinematography this movie fails to capture the impressiveness  of the first one especially the awesomeness of  Reacher like we see in the first movie. There is no cool car chase scene or really even any stellar action scenes that I was expecting to see from this movie. Instead there is a lot of boring dialogue and slow movement in the narrative and again a not very compelling villain.

I went into this movie expecting it to be good because I thoroughly enjoyed the first one. But instead I got a drawn out, no action, boring movie, with a not so good plot and okay acting from everyone but Tom Cruise who still brings it in this role. This movie definitely suffered from not having Christopher Mcquarrie behind the directing chair and writing this one. It also kind of weakened the character of Jack Reacher from being the “I’m gonna drink your blood out of a boot” lone wolf type protagonist to working with others that we don’t really see him do much in the first movie or in the books.

I wouldn’t say this was a terrible movie but it definitely did leave me very disappointed in how it turned out.  I would definitely watch it again if it came on TV someday but there was a lot to be had with this movie. Without a Good performance from Cruise as Jack Reacher this movie definitely wouldn’t have been as entertaining. I really hope they do make another film because Jack  Reacher is a very intriguing character but they do need to bring back the director of the first one if they want a third installment to be successful.