Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

Cast: Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, Aldis Hodge, Patrick Heusinger

Rated: 6/10

Much like Mr Mission Impossible, you can’t view Jack Reacher as any hero other than Tom Cruise. He may be ageing, screen tired and too much of a veteran to light up the fisticuffs and the agility needed for Lee Child’s series of books, but Cruise is Reacher and Reacher Cruise.

So, this film on one of the 20 bestselling action thrillers written by Lee Child, is a tad slow, somewhat different from the novel and the second one on screen after the 2012 outing brought in the gold rush. For those who have not read the novel, the action and the thrill would be more than enough to stay with; for Tom Cruise diehards, it might come across as flawless; and for those avid Child readers, Never Go Back on tape would seem to be a neither here nor there movie on a novel which has been intricately woven and excitingly narrated.

As Reacher, an ex-major in this one, Cruise portrays a lonesome wanderer doing his clinical bit in cleaning up the underbellies of various cities and, of course, calling in on lady Major Turner for a flirtatious but matter of factly break. He is undertoned, flat muscled, man of few words and many raised eyebrows. He is physically fit, unsurpassed in action and totally in control of all situations, the situation in this one being a yarn of deceit, corruption and fatality around the upright Major Turner who is thrown into prison on espionage charges.

So, it is only natural for Reacher to get her out of this web of lies and, in the process, take you through thrilling car, running and old-time fight sequences — no out of the box action of the Impossible campaign, only old world man to man fight more with hands than with guns.

In the middle of all this all-man tough-nut-to-rack hero vs cold-unscrupulous-calculating villain, there is also an indulgence to gender issues and a paternity question and a blonde could-be-his daughter issue hanging over the otherwise uninhibited Reacher.

Not that he loses control ever and that’s the reason why you sit through this film with satisfaction if not outright deny delight as Reacher and his situation takes you deep into the cocaine-in-rocket-launchers thriller emanating from Afghanistan.