I can't respect a film that hires on talent and still comes up with something so vanilla. I've never read one of Lee Child's books, but I don't think I need to in order to enjoy a film like this. I enjoyed the first one immensely. From the opening scene, which is the bar scene we get to see in the trailer, the writing is just so bad. Jack Reacher is constantly spitting out one-liners that just don't hit the eat correctly, some even cringe-worthy. There are two plot lines at play here. One involving Cobie Smulders and the other involving Danika Yarosh. The Dankia plotline was an absolute mess. I don't know why they felt the need to add this because in the end it doesn't pay off and you don't care. The movie is completely devoid of emotion. The villains are a company of innumerable soldiers with unlimited funding (even though the movie mentions they lost billions prior to when the movie begins).
The fact that the first film was good just makes this failure so much worse. The seem to have a good central character that works (books sales say that much). I hope the novels don't actually have Reacher saying the cliched lines he has here. The direction was just competent. There was nothing special. No style. Just...vanilla? I think by the end of this film I understand Jack Reacher even less. If this is what they are going to do with the character then they should have stopped after the first one.
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