The second Jack Reacher movie feels more like a double episode of a TV show than a movie, but for what it is I found it totally serviceable.
The weakest part of the movie is an incredibly dumb subplot about Reacher’s maybe-daughter. It’s dumb and pointless, but I don’t think it gets in the way too much until the very end of the movie. As in the plot is done with and the movie should be over, but that bullshit just keeps going.
What separates this movie from simply feeling like a prime time TV show is that occasionally Tom Cruise will deliver a Taken-esque speech about breaking a dude’s spine… and then later back up those words. The violence is pretty good for a PG-13 movie, nothing special really but better than you might expect.
It’s for sure a step down from the last film. Christopher McQuarrie’s presence as writer/director is solely missed. This movie has 3 credited screen writers and that explains a lot of its fractured feel. There are individual scenes that work, but overall it’s kind of a mess.
The biggest point in this movie’s favor is that it just moves. There’s just a good brisk pace to the whole thing. This is a movie that (mostly) goes down smooth with little aftertaste, or impact. This isn’t something anyone should seek out, but I think it’s totally ok as just a thing that happens to be in front of you.
