The Legend Slayer Cometh Once Again-Dismantling Or Trade Puffing The Legend Of One Jack Reacher?-Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” (2016)-A Film Review

By Will Bradley 

I am not as a legendary-slayer (and on occasion as here a legend promoter I guess we would call it) impervious to the taunts and barbs of the latter-day press agents, flak-catchers and toadies whose sole reason for existence is to grab a soft paycheck hustling their client’s claims to legend status. In this business those noises come with the territory and are what I would call collateral damage incident to getting the average citizen to think through who deserves if anybody legendary status. In my last review touting Jack Reacher’s candidacy for that status I mentioned in passing a few legends that I have put a dent in. That however had not stopped the press agents from howling bloody murder when I step on their clients’ toes.

People are surprised and maybe the reader of this piece will be too that a deadbeat like Robin Hood once he grabbed every piece of land King Richard would grant him turned from cheapjack highway robberies to gouging his yeomen tenants until they cried “uncle” and was so cheap he left his bastard daughter with one of the milkmaids three sheep and said good luck. Three fucking sheep. Yet his paid press agent Friar Tuck filled the Domesday books with so many lies about his generosity that it would take centuries to answer every one. Here is the surprising part this press agency did not stop with Tuck when he passed on to hell but was taken up by his son and the son’s boyfriend and from there passed to the Dominicans who have perpetuated the malarkey until I put a big crimp in their operation. Same with the slaver Captain Blood whose latest flak-catchers have proposed that there be reparations to any descendants of slaves who passed the Middle Passage on one of the Captain’s ship. Bullshit since there is no money attached to that so-called plan. Worse of all and my fellow writer here Laura Perkins can testify to this since she had to deal with this bastard while defending herself against the crazies who wanted to trash her idea that all serious 20^th century art is twisted up with sex and erotica are the defenders of Larry Lawrence, aka Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick who worked under various aliases from Nigel Bruce to  Doc Watson like Doyle, Arthur Gilmore Doyle who has attempted a massive counter-attack on the Lawrence legend ( I refuse to call him Holmes as the documented records in Scotland Yard have Lawrence as his real name on his extensive police rap sheet).

Needless to say, when I went to bat for Jack Reacher all hell broke loose not only from the various press agents whose clients I have dinged like those above who came out of their caves with massive furor but those who question why I would proffer an “off the grid” ex-servicemen as worthy of legendary status. A guy who claimed to have known Jack over in Iraq when he ran a big-time MP unit after the heavy fighting subsided claimed, erroneously when I checked the facts, that Jack was running a numbers racket forcing his underlings to fork up dough, or else. Noise, just noise. Moreover, anybody except some toady of some busted legend would have noticed that I went out of my WAY in capital letters to say that I was touting the guy not based on his military record although the skills he learned there would have helped with his actions in the Barr case. Particularly as he went about his “off the grid” business and was impervious to press agent build-ups. I liked that.

The silliest e-mail I received, and I am not sure that it might not have been a ruse put out by the Marvel Comics cabal was challenging my subsequent debasing of the budding legend machine around some punk high school kid name, get this Peter Parker, aka the Spider Man. The kid a joke promoted by one Tony Stark aka Ironman to build up his own legend by having what he called a swarm of docile avengers ready to save the world, or given how many times the place been invaded, marauded, twisted and plain bombed New York City. This kid, this Parker for crying out loud puts his “uniform” on in back alleys with the cats. Give me a break. Last I heard he had been fighting red-tail lizards the smallest variety of the species and barely holding his own after some mad scientist who knew his late father went too fast in his protocol and almost screwed up the world, or least New York. Some young woman classmate had to bail him out by figuring out a formula to stop the little bastards. I will have more to say about the Stark “creation” shortly since the publicity department at Stark Industries had decided to make a film about the kid’s “exploits.”                              

The beauty and it really is a beauty in modern times when everybody with access to a smart phone and that means about everybody is promoting themselves or some silly cause here is Jack out in the wilderness what I have already called “off the grid,” a nomad. Even I could not believe the story when I heard it being just cynical enough not to buy into legends having spent some serious time debunking the run of the mill bums. I initially thought Jack was an invention of some agency, some “deep state” agency who were running him like the old time Soviet sleeper operations (keep the agents under cover and then spring them on an unsuspecting world like they did with Trump). On misty nights when I am in a funk I still think that may be true. But I have taken the leap of faith on this one based on the case he had just finished, the Barr case where he saved a guy he didn’t even like from the big step-off. That intrigued me.

The funny thing about Jack and in the deep recesses of my mind make me finch is how he is as isolated as his is “connected,” knows his way around Washington, D.C. (a town that Stark and his dumbass minions in the Marvel/DC Comic cabal giving New York City a break should think about saving for it surely needs saving). From nowhere Jack can call up his replacement at the old 110^th MP unit, the elite unit now led by a woman as it turned out. This woman, a major, is in trouble on two scores-one a couple of her agents got wasted by some rogue U.S. agent in Iraq and closer to home was relieved of her command and charged with espionage. (I might as well forewarn the romantics out there that nothing with take place between the two under the silky sheets, although not for her not giving him some encouragement but Jack is built differently as they say these days. After leaving a hint in the Barr case where Jack did not take on the drop-dead beautiful lawyer defending the sniper that Jack was probably gay and that was okay in this day in age when our legends can be gay or whatever. This case confirmed my suspicions and it is clear that Jack is at least more comfortable around men and we will leave it at that)  

Jack to the rescue following all kinds of false leads after personally springing the Major from the stockade to find out why her people were killed and for what reason (no mean feat and a rather high bar that those fake legends like Robin Hood, Larry Lawrence, Casanova and the crowd would crumble under). This pair, this skilled pair after seven kinds of hell finally figure out that the whole thing is a scam being run at a high level involving weapons to the bad guys in  Afghanistan in exchange for high grade opium to help a faltering state-side business (which Afghans at while moment a good question if you can figure out who is good and who is bad something the British, Russians and American have never figured out to their respective sorrows). A scam that big meant somebody in the American command, a General, was running the whole operation using rogue Black Water-type ex-military to do their bidding. Case closed Jack walked away (away from a bogus paternity suit as well but that was only filler here since we now know Jack’s sexual preferences). Walked away to hitch a ride to some place leaving me here to sing his song of glory. Enough said