Today, I will be reviewing two action movies. I will be reviewing "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" which is the sequel to 2012's "Jack Reacher" and "The Accountant." Before I get started, I'd like to give a shoutout to the Free Gamer's Alliance YouTube channel. Their videos cover everything from walkthroughs, glitches, easter eggs, and various amusing video game related content, all of which is delivered with some colorful commentary while they have buckets of fun doing it. Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC03E6K3QHRMp7Vs0S6wHm6Q
Lets get started with "The Accountant." Here is the trailer:
- The cast is excellent. Ben Affleck, Anna Kenndrick, J.K Simmonds, and Cynthia Assai-Robinson in particular bring their a-game. They all play their characters so naturally.
- The action scenes are well choreographed and fun to watch.
- The ending is so ridiculous that it is actually weirdly enjoyable
- The pacing in this movie is terrible. The first half of the movie is incredibly slow. The movie does pick up after this but it really is a chore to get trough the first half.
- There are some interesting characters that unfortunately either don't get to do anything meaningful or whose story lines feel forced for the sake of padding the run time of the movie.
- Finally, I found myself rolling my eyes at many times due to the portrayal of people with Autism. This movie tries start a meaningful discussion on the topic but simply ends up stereotyping hard. The people behind this have an understanding of this that is clearly juvenile at best.
"The Accountant" is a movie that had so much potential but fails due to poor execution. If the movie had been cut down and better thought out we could have had a solid action thriller. Unfortunately we just ended up getting kind of a mess. I would say either rent or skip this one.
Lets move on to "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back." Here is the trailer:
- Cobie Smulders is an excellent addition to this franchise. She proves once again that she can play a tough badass with a certain level of humanity.
- The action scenes are pretty good. I wish there were more of them but the ones that are here are fun to watch.
- The pacing in this movie is brutal. So many scenes drag on way longer than they should and it resulted in a lot of boredom for me.
- The movie attempts to make Tom Cruise's character less one-dimensional by humanizing him. Unfortunately, the way they go about it makes it all seem super forced and awkward.
- The plot is way too convoluted. This makes the movie much less fun to watch as the audience has to put so much effort into following such a nonsensical and over complicated plot.
- Finally, this movie is so cliche ridden that your eyes will roll a lot.
While "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" does have some good qualities, it is largely a cliche ridden mess that manages to be really boring. I would not recommend seeing this in theaters and I would also be really hesitant to recommend this as a rental either.
Thanks for reading everyone!! As usual, feel free to leave a comment but please be advised that if you read any potential comments that spoilers may be present.