Jack Reacher didn’t exactly redefine action movies when it came out in 2012. Still, it was a solid little thriller, stuffed with ballistic conspiracies, sniper battles and Tom Cruise dismantling bar patrons. It’s hard not to like a scuzzy, unambitious Pittsburgh action movie, especially one that basically boils down to a construction company scam orchestrated by Werner Herzog. Jack Reacher was a refreshing throwback to 70s mid-budget action jams, when hearing muscle cars purr meant more than seeing them explode. And it was a hell of a lot better than the bloated and over-hyped Skyfall.
So it’s a little disappointing to see that Jack Reacher has discovered ambition in the first quasi-trailer for sequel Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. Instead of a sordid little murder covering up construction contracts, it looks like Jack Reacher 2 blows open a massive army conspiracy pitting Lee Child’s wandering do-gooder against the entire U.S. government. Boooooooooooooo. Everyone’s fighting the government these days. Who else wants to see Jack Reacher uncover some sanitation department contract perfidy instead?
The trailer comes courtesy of Entertainment Tonight, who scored lots of new footage and edited it into an incoherent mish-mash of movie footage and interview material with Tom Cruise’s co-star, Cobie Smulders.
In addition to a plot that seems more fitting for Jason Bourne than Jack Reacher, Jack Reacher 2 also replaced talented director and writer Christopher McQuarrie with far less capable peeps. So even if Jack Reacher: Never Go Back had kept the stakes suitably small, this was still likely to be yet another disappointing sequel in a year full of useless sequels.
