JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK (5 out of 10) Directed by Edward Zwick, Written by Richard Wenk, Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz, based on the book “Never Go Back” by Lee Child; Starring Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, Aldis Hodge, Danika Yarosh, Patrick Heusinger, Holt McCallany; Running time 118 minutes, Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, some bloody images, language and thematic elements; In wide release October 21, 2016.

Want to turn off your brain and watch Tom Cruise kick five guys’ butts at once? Wanna see Cobie Smulders kick the same amount of butt? Then have I got a movie for you. . . 

Yes, this is the sequel to 2012’s Jack Reacher, which had Tom Cruise as retired Army Major Jack Reacher beating up bad guys, based on the popular series of novels you probably read on a plane sometime. In this film, Reacher finds himself drifting from place to place finding trouble and meting out justice, working with his former colleagues in the Army Military Police, including a quasi-handler named Turner (Smulders). When he drops into town to get a quasi-romantic cup of coffee with Turner, she has been arrested for treason. In a double whammy, Reacher is informed someone has filed a paternity claim with the army to get pension benefits, claiming she is his daughter– that he conveniently doesn’t know anything about. When it seems like an evil military contractor is now threatening Reacher, including his possible daughter, he has to break Turner out of jail and take down the wave after wave of mercenaries who are coming after them.

This is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food– nothing incredibly substantive or new, but it is satisfying and well-crafted. It clips along at a good pace and doesn’t leave us wondering about the plot too long before resolving its mysteries.

While Cruise is good here, and seemingly intent on reminding us that at 53 and 5′ 3″ (just kidding– he’s taller than that) he can still kick all sorts of ass, the real revelation is Smulders.

Cobie Smulders in this movie is in every way Tom Cruise’s equal, in much the same way Emily Blunt was able to constantly show up Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow. She also meets the issues head on of sexism and working in the ultra-macho man’s world of the military. Is it too much to ask to see more of Maria Hill in future Marvel movies (may I suggest a girl-pal adventure in Captain Marvel? Or a much bigger part of The Avengers in Infinity War?)

There’s also some awkward talk around the idea of a possible romantic pairing between her and Reacher– interesting to think that when Cruise slid across the floor in his underwear in Risky Business, Smulders was literally still in diapers, and when he sang to Kelly McGillis that she’s lost that loving feeling in Top Gun she was 4. **Vomit** Glad they talked about how awkward that was. 

But when Smulders is on, the movie rips.

Not so much with the bratty teen who plays the would-be daughter. The only good purpose she serves in the movie is to be the fresh face in the story who needs to have everything explained to– a smart move to keep exposition running along, but she’s otherwise just not useful.

Overall, this is a perfect popcorn movie that doesn’t expect anything from the audience except sit back and consume. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, you be the judge.

But Tom Cruise still has it. And it’s fun seeing him and Smulders savagely beat bad guys. 

5 out of 10

‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Episode 1.20 “Nothing Personal” (7 out of 10) Created by Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen; Starring Clark Gregg, Chloe Bennet, Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton; Tuesdays on ABC.

As one might guess from the title of tonight’s episode, there are a lot of people shrugging off the bad things they do with the justification that they’re just following orders. It presents an interesting shift in SHIELD’s (Coulson’s) dynamic. For so many years, SHIELD was built upon the ability of its agents to follow orders and get the job done. Now that it’s been revealed as a front for HYDRA, Coulson has been thrust into a world where he no longer has orders to follow or protocols to implement. HYDRA (Garrett) is now the organization that is bound by its twisted hierarchy. In other words, Coulson’s primary conflict is not going to be with taking down Garrett and his lackey Ward, it’s going to be getting used to a world in which he has to forge his own path—and maybe break a few rules along the way.

Ward is HYDRA

The episode took its time in letting Coulson and his team in on the fact that Ward is actually a HYDRA sleeper agent. After some time spent looking for the dearly departed Agent Koening, Fitz discovers a note scrawled into a painting, and despite the obvious implication of Ward as a bad guy, Fitz doesn’t take the news too well, deciding to take his angst out on Trip before submitting to an full-blown freakout. The scene was designed with the intention of showing how all of this deception can derail even the most optimistic of SHIELD’s agents, but it was unclear why Fitz was so unraveled by Ward’s betrayal—Skye took it much better, and she’s practically in love with the traitor. 

Skye’s interaction with Ward during this episode was interesting, though. After finding out that Ward is a HYDRA mole moments before he asks her to hop in the plane with him, she’s faced with the difficult task of planning her next move while still convincing Ward that she’s unaware of his treachery. As she’s the only one who can decrypt an important SHIELD hard drive that has fallen into Garrett’s hands, she realizes that she’s in control of the situation. Her best laid plans are interrupted after her attempt to get them both arrested is foiled by Deathlok, which also means that her cover with Ward is no longer intact. 

Once the three of them are on Ward’s stolen SHIELD plane, Skye’s interrogation begins. Based on the way Ward talks to Skye, it looks like the show is still trying to paint him as this conflicted villain; a survivor who is merely doing what he needs to in order to survive. He mentions that his feelings for Skye are genuine, and that he has no intentions on letting her get hurt, but come on, people. Basically, he’s either exploiting an emotional vulnerability within Skye’s character or he’s being serious. Both options demonstrate a staggering disrespect of Skye, because Ward either thinks she’s dumb enough to let his good looks and swagger cloud over the fact that he’s a stone cold killer, or, even worse, he’s serious about his feelings for Skye and assumes that she’ll just forgive him if he makes some more bedroom eyes at her. Since Ward’s betrayal a few episodes ago, it’s not possible to bring him back to a point where the audience is going to care if he lives or dies. He’s become a soulless drone for HYDRA, and it’s about time for the show to just let him be pure evil. For example, there’s a moment when Deathlok attempts to persuade Skye to decrypt the hard drive by holding Ward hostage—if she doesn’t cooperate, Ward will die. Apparently Skye didn’t see the faulty logic here, because she falls for it—even though letting Ward die would mean neutralizing one of SHIELD’s biggest threats. Plus, Deathlok would have felt like a total dumbass if his plan backfired and he managed to kill the only one who could land the plane.

The episode concludes with a very comic book rescue mission in which Coulson sneaks aboard Ward’s stolen plane to save Skye—he uses Stark’s hover-Corvette to bust Skye out, which was a pretty cool scene considering the TV show budget. The whole team, including May, is reunited and after getting a pep talk from Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), they regroup to prepare for the impending season finale. It’s the moment when Coulson snaps into agent mode, barking at Hill to get backup and tactical supplies for their “mission.” This is when Hill takes a minute to smack Coulson with the harsh reality that SHIELD no longer exists, and that they need to take care of this personal vendetta and move on with their lives. Again, Coulson’s success is going to hinge upon his ability to break the rules that he’s lived by for so long, which shouldn’t be too difficult now that I think about it. After all, even when SHIELD was up and running they kind of did classified experiments on him to bring him back to life and then covered the whole thing up. It’s time for Coulson to forge his own path, and it will be interesting to see how the show approaches this inner conflict.

Verdict

First and foremost, it’s good to have May and Coulson back to trusting each other. I never quite bought the beef that Coulson had with May, and it’s good to see their melodramatic “angry scenes” come to an end. It’s also a relief to see Ward exposed as a HYDRA lackey to his colleagues, mainly because I’d like to see them each take turns whacking him in the face with a baseball bat. Cobie Smulders’s cameo presented more than just an opportunity for fans to point and say, “Look guys! It’s Maria Hill!” Hill’s character was instrumental in a lot of the episode’s action, plus she made some funny cracks about working for Stark Industries, which make the storylines of the films and the TV show feel more interconnected.

Next week we will be graced with the season finale, which looks like it’s going to explore Ward’s relationship with Garrett via a few flashbacks. Once again, it feels like a suspicious ploy to get the audience to sympathize with Ward, which is a waste of time. It’s tough to get over the fact that he shot a disabled man and betrayed all of his friends. I’m still holding out hope for the baseball bat scenario.