But there’s nothing that hasn’t been seen innumerable times before, and in neither style nor substance do Zwick and his writers bring anything new to the genre table here. As ever, Reacher is most into hand-to-hand combat, as is The Hunter, resulting in some pretty intense bone-crushing snaps, jabs and well-placed slugs. We just see snippets of the locals celebrating as only these locals can, however, as Reacher and The Hunter have it out on the rooftops of the French Quarter while the revelers party on obliviously below. Left largely to her own devices by her mother, Samantha ends up accompanying the pair to New Orleans, where the trio scenically arrive just as the Halloween parade is about to swing into action.

The one real twist in the strictly mechanical script by Richard Wenk (the very recent The Magnificent Seven), Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (the latter two now a very long way from Thirtysomethingdays) is the presence of a teenager, Samantha ( Danika Yarosh), who may or may not be Reacher’s daughter from a relationship 16 years earlier. Narratively, the film is almost entirely nuts and bolts, with Reacher and Susan literally on the run most of the time from a coolly efficient assassin (Patrick Heusinger) simply called The Hunter who, in one-on-one combat, can give Reacher a pretty hard time. This puts him at odds with a Blackwater-like security firm that seems to be running the show and is both willing and anxious to rub out anyone who’s on to its big-time weapons and drug dealing. It’s even a notable drop-off from the first Reacher feature, which brandished some decent mystery-thriller elements, a very good and realistic car chase, Rosamund Pike in the female lead, juicy supporting turns by Robert Duvall and Werner Herzog and fine Caleb Deschanel cinematography.

The film also marks quite a step down, in both ambition and accomplishment, from Cruise and director Edward Zwick’s previous collaboration on The Last Samurai 16 years ago. Based on the 18th of Child’s 20 Reacher best-sellers, the film serves up nothing that hasn’t been seen in countless action films before, and it’s striking how little effort appears to have been made to give it any distinction: The villains are military guys gone rogue, the female lead is basically fighting the same fight Rosalind Russell did to be recognized for her equal worth among men in His Girl Friday more than 75 years ago, the hand-to-hand combat won’t make anyone’s highlight reel and even the star looks a bit pale and out of training compared with the shape he invariably gets himself into for the far more elaborate and fun Mission outings.

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