Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (Edward Zwick, US, 2016)

Jack Reacher Never Go Back USA/People’s Republic of China 2016 Director: Edward Zwick Certificate 12A 117m 59s Credits and Synopsis Producers Marcin Kurek Sylwester Banaszkiewicz Marián Urban Vojtech Fric Petr Kazda Tomás Weinreb Written by Tomás Weinreb Petr Kazda Story Roman Cílek Director of Photography Adam Sikora Editor Vojtech Fric Art Director Alexandr Kozák Sound Designers Richard Müller Petr Kapeller Costume Designer Aneta Grnáková ©Black Balance, Media Brigade, ALEF Film & Media, love. FRAME, Odra-Film, Barrandov Studios, Spoon, Michel Samuelson Lighting Prague, FAMU, Arizona Productions, FRAME100R Production Companies Producers: Black Balance, Media Brigade, ALEF Film & Media, love.FRAME Co-producers: Barrandov Studios, Spoon, Michel Samuelson Lighting Prague, FAMU, Arizona Productions Line producers: FRAME100R, ALEF Film & Media Supported by State Cinematography Fund and film incentives of State Cinematography Fund A Polish Film Institute co-financed production Financially supported by Slovak Audiovisual Fund, ODRA-Film Co-financed by Lower Silesian Film Fund from the funds of City of Wroclaw and Lower Silesia Region Executive Producer Agata Walkosz Cast Michalina Olszanska Olga Hepnarová Martin Pechlát Miroslav Klára Melísková Olga’s mother Marika Soposká Jitka Juraj Nvota Anwalt Kovár Malwina Turek Marika, gypsy girl In Black & White [1.85:1] Subtitles Distributor MUBI Czech theatrical title Já, Olga HEPNAROVÁ Prague, 1964. Following a suicide attempt, 13-yearold Olga Hepnarová is told by her mother that she lacks the willpower to kill herself. After spending her teenage years either with her coldly distant family or in a psychiatric institution (where she is badly bullied), in 1971 she moves out of the family home into a small hut in the woods. She works as a truck driver but finds it hard to relate to her mostly male and much older colleagues. She is invited out by more sympathetic colleague Jitka, and they begin a passionate lesbian relationship. However, Jitka breaks off with Olga after becoming unnerved by her unpredictable behaviour. Olga is fired from her job following an unspecified complaint. She moves into a hostel and begins relationships with Marika, a woman she meets in a bar, and Miroslav, a passerby. He proves unusually sympathetic, but Olga’s psychological withdrawal intensifies. Her request that she be hospitalised for her own protection is turned down. On 10 July 1973, after justifying her actions in writing in advance, she drives her truck into a bus queue, killing eight and wounding 12. Afterwards, since she insists that she was completely sane and that the crime was premeditated, the state has no alternative but to sentence her to death. On 12 March 1975, after a brief struggle with the prison guards, Hepnarová is hanged. Reviewed by Henry K. Miller Spoiler alert: this review reveals a plot twist If the goofy sight of Tom Cruise – white T-shirt, blue jeans – punching a bad guy – wraparound shades, goatee – through a car window doesn’t raise a smile, then Jack Reacher: Never Go Back probably isn’t somewhere to go in the first place. It isn’t all like that. At points this second instalment in the Reacher film series (based on Lee Child’s 18th Reacher book) oddly resembles a screwball comedy. As in the first film, army veteran Reacher is a human Littlest Hobo who goes from place to place assisting law enforcement agencies as he sees fit, not staying for long. This time around, however, he catches feelings. After helping her arrest some corrupt local cops in Virginia, he bonds over the phone with the commander of his old military police unit, Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), and later encounters a teenage orphan, Samantha (Danika Yarosh), who may be his daughter. The question is whether he’ll want to settle down, or keep moving on. When he arrives in Washington DC to take Turner on a date, Reacher learns that she’s been arrested for espionage and is himself framed for murdering her lawyer. Having escaped from jail and figured out who is trying to get them – military contractors Parasource, whose malfeasance Turner has been investigating – the pair take Samantha into what amounts to protective custody and hotfoot it to New Orleans to interrogate a witness, all the while being pursued by Parasource’s top goon, an assassin with no name. Notably in Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and to an extent in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015), Cruise has taken a back seat to his female co-stars, respectively Emily Blunt and Rebecca Ferguson, and the trend continues with Smulders here. Smulders is best known from the long-running sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and Never Go Back is at its best as a REVIEWS post-1968 ‘normalisation’ in Czechoslovakia was a contributing factor in Olga’s mental decline. Polish-born Michalina Olszanska made a considerable impact as a killer mermaid in Agnieszka Smoczynska’s cult hit The Lure (2015), but Olga Hepnarová is a far more challenging role. She’s present but mostly silent in nearly every shot, mentally assuming a foetal position even while nominally remaining upright. Her cinematographer compatriot Adam Sikora’s characteristically stark, spare lighting is becoming increasingly identifiable, whether in colour (Jerzy Skolimowski’s Four Nights with Anna and Essential Killing) or black-and-white (Piotr Dumala’s The Forest and Ederly), with his own directing debut, the 2010 Samuel Beckett adaptation Expelled, suggesting a close personal affinity with studies of the psychologically marginalised. Counterpuncher: Tom Cruise comedy-thriller. A nicely anticlimactic early confrontation with the unnamed assassin ends with Reacher and Turner nursing their wounds and vowing to improve their co-ordination. The succession of motel rooms in which they stay while on the lam brings to mind It Happened One Night (1934), and one might discern the undead hand of the Hays Office in the film’s ambiguity over whether they’re sleeping together, brought into the open when Samantha joins them. Samantha’s presence also makes both Reacher and Turner, soldiers and loners both, take on unwanted parental duties, in the course of which Reacher has his residual patriarchal assumptions challenged; but there is too little time for this to develop as the action ramps up, and unfortunately Edward Zwick, best known for directing Oscar fodder, isn’t much good at action. Much of the character business is drastically compressed, possibly in the knowledge that a significant proportion of the audience will have read the books and can fill in the blanks. The result is that Reacher’s decision to, as it turns out, keep moving on, and go on acting like a one-man A-Team in minor criminal cases, rather than stick around with Turner, is not easy to comprehend. Credits and Synopsis Produced by Tom Cruise Don Granger Christopher McQuarrie Screenplay Richard Wenk Edward Zwick Marshall Herskovitz Based on the book Never Go Back by Lee Child Director of Photography Oliver Wood Edited by Billy Weber Production Designer Clay A. Griffith Music Henry Jackman Supervising Sound Editor Mark Stoeckinger Costume Designer Lisa Nora Lovaas Stunt Co-ordinator Wade Eastwood ©Paramount Pictures Corporation Production Companies Paramount Pictures and Skydance present a Tom Cruise production An Edward Zwick film In association with Huahua Media, Shanghai Film Group With assistance from Louisiana Economic Development Executive Producers Paula Wagner Herbert W. Gains David Ellison Dana Goldberg Cast Tom Cruise Jack Reacher Cobie Smulders Major Susan Turner Aldis Hodge Lieutentant Espin Danika Yarosh Samantha Dutton Patrick Heusinger ‘the Hunter’ Holt McCallany Colonel Sam Morgan Robert Knepper General James Harkness Madalyn Horcher Sergeant Leach Robert Catrini Colonel Moorcroft Lee Child TSA agent Austin Hébert Daniel Prudhomme Dolby Atmos In Colour [2.35:1] Distributor Paramount Pictures UK US, the present. Jack Reacher, an ex-army drifter, strikes up a telephone relationship with Major Susan Turner, the commanding officer of Reacher’s old military police unit. When he travels to Washington DC to woo her, he learns that she has been arrested for espionage. His attempts to aid her defence end in him being framed for her lawyer’s murder. In the meantime he faces a paternity suit from a woman he doesn’t remember meeting. Reacher and Turner escape from jail and go on the run. With secret help from Turner’s staff, they deduce that a military contractor, Parasource, is responsible for framing them, and for an attempt on the life of Reacher’s putative daughter Samantha. Taking Samantha with them, they follow a lead to New Orleans, pursued by Parasource assassins. They track down a former Parasource employee, who tells them that during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Parasource sold US-bound arms to warlords. Reacher and Turner go to a local airbase to intercept a Parasource shipment of what they expect to be empty crates, and find instead opium. The military police arrest Parasource’s CEO. Meanwhile Parasource’s main assassin tracks down Samantha. Reacher and Turner arrive in time to fight and kill him. Turner resumes her duties. Reacher goes back on the road. Although it is revealed that Samantha is not his daughter, he enrols her in a private school and establishes a tentative paternal relationship with her. 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