The Tom Cruise Thriller That Created 'Reacher's Formula Is Taking Over Streaming

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Published Aug 24, 2026, 11:11 PM EDT

Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely passionate about the work of Martin Scorsese, John Ford, and Albert Brooks. His work can be read on Collider and Taste of Cinema. He also writes for his own blog, The Empty Theater, on Substack. He is also a big fan of courtroom dramas and DVD commentary tracks. For Thomas, movie theaters are a second home. A native of Wakefield, MA, he is often found scrolling through the scheduled programming on Turner Classic Movies and making more room for his physical media collection. Thomas habitually increases his watchlist and jumps down a YouTube rabbit hole of archived interviews with directors and actors. He is inspired to write about film to uphold the medium's artistic value and to express his undying love for the art form. Thomas looks to cinema as an outlet to better understand the world, human emotions, and himself.

Fans of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher book series rejoiced when Prime Video’s wildly successful series, Reacher, hit TV screens in 2022 with the strapping, gargantuan Alan Ritchson in the titular role. Ritchson's four-season run as Reacher, in the minds of many fans, righted the wrong of Tom Cruise's original turn as the hero; even creator Childs eventually admitted that casting Cruise as a 6'5, 250-pound bruiser was ridiculous, telling the BBC that "Cruise, for all his talent, didn't have that physicality." Cruise's two Reacher movies — Jack Reacher, released in 2012, and its forgotten sequel, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, released in 2016 — suffer as a result, as they adhere to the formula of Cruise action blockbusters, rather than honor Child's work on the page. Nowhere is this more apparent than with Edward Zwick's Never Go Back.

But Cruise's Reacher films also offer the star's typically superlative level of spectacle and stuntwork, making the film not quite a total miss. Curious viewers can now decide for themselves, as the latter is climbing the streaming charts on Paramount+.

'Jack Reacher: Never Go Back' Was a Mixed Bag

For viewers who weren't already Reacher fans (and thus disappointed in the leading man), Christopher McQuarrie's Jack Reacher was a thrilling, action-packed experience, aided by Cruise's innate movie star charisma and the unstoppable, devil-may-care persona that the actor brought to his Mission: Impossible movies — four of which would go on to be directed by McQuarrie.

With Never Go Back, the reins were handed over to Cruise's Last Samurai director, Edward Zwick, best known for historical epics and war dramas like Glory, Legends of the Fall, and Courage Under Fire. The film surging up the charts on Paramount Plus is based on Child's book of the same name. In it, Reacher returns to uncover another grave government conspiracy, which leads to his going on the run as a fugitive with few allies — most notably Military Police commander Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), who is also being framed.

While it performed fairly well at the box office, the film's reception was mixed at best, with critics and Reacher fans alike asking whether we truly needed a sequel, even if the series is ripe with stories waiting to be adapted for the screen. The original will never be confused with Shakespeare, but it had enough dramatic heft and engaging twists and turns to elevate itself above the basic action crop. Never Go Back, however, had a story and retreaded plot that would have better served as a direct-to-video sequel, one that someone of Cruise's pedigree would have no business partaking in. Where McQuarrie's film let its stacked supporting cast shine in various ways, Zwick's film underutilizes its own supporting actors, including versatile talents like Cobie Smulders, Aldis Hodge, and Holt McCallany. No Cruise movie would be complete without awkward chemistry with his female co-star, and here, Smulders' tough MP commander somehow falls for Reacher despite his emotional distance.

'Jack Reacher: Never Go Back' Set the Template for the Modern Tom Cruise Movie

Today, every Tom Cruise film is a major cinematic event; for proof, just witness the months-long rollout for his upcoming return to creatively challenging work, the highly anticipated Alejandro González Iñárritu film Digger. Given this, it's bizarre in hindsight that Cruise made the relatively forgotten Jack Reacher: Never Go Back only 10 years ago. Upon re-examination, however, Cruise's Reacher sequel quietly set the blueprint for the Cruise blockbuster event that today captivates audiences across the globe.

The release of both Top Gun: Maverick and the 2010s and 2020s Mission: Impossible films revolved around Cruise's public persona as an inscrutable, uber-determined, and God-like manifestation of destiny (to quote Alec Baldwin's character in Rogue Nation). In Never Go Back, Reacher has been fully absorbed by the Cruise persona, making the character nearly indistinguishable from Pete Mitchell or Ethan Hunt. While the film's script doesn't attempt to raise the stakes, this version of Reacher is not an incognito outlaw, but rather the embodiment of American liberty and justice.

If you can't buy into the story and characterization, Never Go Back undoubtedly excels as a piece of pure spectacle, with its action set pieces outmatching its predecessor. Edward Zwick's sense of scope and epic magnitude come in handy here, as all the fights, shootouts, and chases (more top-notch running from Cruise, per usual) mirror the white-knuckle intensity of Mission: Impossible's showcase of death-defying stunts.

While it is imperfect and unnecessary, you could still do a lot worse than spending your time watching Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, a movie that probably didn't need to exist. When you have Tom Cruise at the top of his physical game, though, it's hard to complain.