jack's back movie review

Mutant Reviewers

A cult of cult movies, jack’s back (1988) — a pure ’80s murder mystery.

“Jack? I’ve been meaning to tell you: you do good work.”

Kyle’s rating: A pure ’80s murder mystery, streamlined for timeless appeal

Kyle’s review: It’s come to my attention that I tend to get overly wordy and complex in my reviews, as though I’m trying to compete with the professional artistry of specific films by being both aloof and mysterious in an interesting way. The obvious response here is: Duh! Also, I am never to blame: it’s probably the Red Bull and my residual “juice” from daily Scrabble tournaments. But it’s worth a shot to remix and refine. Was it Socrates or Sheryl Crow who sang “A change (a change!) will do you good”? Doesn’t matter.

Curiously, the film Jack’s Back provides opportunity for both me to change my writing habits and for you to change your horror habits. Jack’s Back had been haunting me for years; a videocassette box with a big picture of sweaty James Spader on the front and the promise of an intricate Jack the Ripper-inspired written on the back. My mom never let me rent it at Safeway (where she held the lone rental card!) and I couldn’t find it anywhere else. But then it was on IFC, and I realized my destiny had come full circle. Would it live up to the hype of my memories and subsequent research in horror film tomes? Or would it be another 1980s slasher pic that rightfully faded into VHS anonymity like so many comers did? How could James Spader go wrong?

Thank the horror muses: viewing Jack’s Back should make you feel like your ’80s suspense love is back. It’s a film that is stuck solidly in the me decade, with odd fashions, a decisive divide between the haves and have-nots, and loads of cigarettes. It’s a film shot in the style of Michael Mann (think Manhunter ) and written in the style of your favorite mystery writer, with the sole supernatural twist centering on the psychic (?) bond between twins. The murders aren’t as gory as they are wince-inducing, and the hard-boiled characters are memorable and honest. Plus, you may think you have the mystery solved, but you don’t! Well, maybe you do. I was surprised and fooled, but I’m slow. I can admit it.

James Spader is excellent and effective in dual roles, playing estranged twins whose experiences combine into a very bad 48 hours (insert Doublemint gum joke here). The rest of the cast, including a big beefy dude who may just be a big beefy red herring named Jack, is also quite good, looking appropriately moody, suspicious, and nicotine-addicted as necessary. But it’s Spader that we stick with for like 85% of the time, and it’s Spader that successfully carries the weight. Whether he’s the quirky and playfully shy the doctor twin, or he’s the mysterious yet valiant loner shoe salesman, Spader’s a magnetic presence. I used to wonder why the video cover was just a sweaty yet slightly disturbing James Spader head shot. Now I know. And you should, too!

Which brings me to you. Too often, it seems like modern film fans don’t always have the patience and understanding to watch older films without shooting the footage and story through their modern prisms and finding these older films painfully inadequate. Even horror genre fans, who are forced by the smallish (relatively speaking) selection of films for them to go nuts over, can’t resist giving in to their residual ironic tendencies and pointing out “A cell phone would have solved everything” and “Didn’t they sell bullets everywhere back then?” I’m not saying that’s what you’re like. I’m just sayin’. But if you can get over any irritation towards the past you may carry within, Jack’s Back is a great murder mystery with sinister undertones. Sure, if it took place today a lot of stuff would go down differently. But as a product of the times, Jack’s Back is super-cool. Give it a chance!

Yeah, Jack’s Back is good stuff. The Spader is kick-ass, the Jack the Ripper connection provides a lot of weight, and the ’80s-soaked Thunderdome-esque streets of Los Angeles are the perfect seedy setting for such dangerous goings-on. It’s a relic of a time when everybody smoked and twins were like freakish abnormalities, but it’s a very entertaining and rewarding relic, when a slasher movie wasn’t considered an easy product for cheap scares but a vehicle for intelligent drama that happened in and around horrific on-screen murders.

It might be tough to find unless you’ve got Independent Film Channel or a well-stocked rental place, but it’s worth the effort. Great moody ’80s stuff! Who’s up for a remake? I know I am!

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Jack's Back

Where to Watch

James Spader (John) Cynthia Gibb (Chris Moscari) Jim Haynie (Sgt. Gabriel) Robert Picardo (Dr. Carlos Battera) Rod Loomis (Dr. Sidney Tannerson) Rex Ryon (Jack Pendler) Chris Mulkey (Scott Morofsky) Wendell Wright (Capt. Walter Prentis) John Wesley (Sam Hilliard) Bobby Hosea (Tom Dellerton)

Rowdy Herrington

A serial killer in Los Angeles celebrates Jack the Ripper's 100th birthday by committing similar murders and only one has a chance of stopping him.

More about Jack's Back

The man behind road house debuted with the nutso jack the ripper thriller jack’s back.

On Scream Factory’s new DVD/Blu-ray set of the half-forgotten 1988 thriller Jack’s Back , the movie’s cinematographer …

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Jack's back.

1988 Directed by Rowdy Herrington

One hundred years ago, in the City of London, in the East-End slum of Whitechapel, a man shocked the world by murdering, raping and mutilating five women. He was never caught.

A young doctor is suspected when a series of Jack the Ripper copycat killings is committed. However, when the doctor himself is murdered, his identical twin brother claims to have seen visions of the true killer.

James Spader Cynthia Gibb Jim Haynie Robert Picardo Rod Loomis Rex Ryon Chris Mulkey John Wesley Bobby Hosea Danitza Kingsley Anne Betancourt Kevin Glover Cassian Elwes Kathryn O'Reilly Wendell Wright Diane Erickson Sis Greenspon Graham Timbes Mario Machado Paul Du Pratt Rana Ford Daniela Petr Shawne Rowe John Harrison Spencer Clarke Pola Del Mar Brian Bender Richard Parker Cindy Guyer Show All… Frances Fleming

Director Director

Rowdy Herrington

Producers Producers

Tim Moore Cassian Elwes

Writer Writer

Casting casting.

Kimba Hills

Editor Editor

Harry B. Miller III

Cinematography Cinematography

Shelly Johnson

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Richard W. Abramitis Ellen Rauch

Additional Directing Add. Directing

Steve Hirsen

Lighting Lighting

Michael Bolner

Camera Operator Camera Operator

Production design production design.

Piers Plowden

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Deborah Evans

Stunts Stunts

Jeff Jensen Neil Summers Al Wyatt Sr. Jerry Spicer Tom Morga Eddie Braun John Moio J.P. Romano Sandy J. Leavenworth Scott Hass

Composer Composer

Danny Di Paola

Sound Sound

Harry B. Miller III Greg P. Russell Jeffrey J. Haboush Lorraine Salk Mark Herman Robert J. Anderson Jr. Barry Rubinow Gregory Sanders David A. Fechtor

Costume Design Costume Design

Susie DeSanto

Makeup Makeup

Karoly Balazs Barbara Wolfe John Naulin

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Karoly Balazs Barbara Wolfe Julie Mauger

Cinema Group Palisades Entertainment

Alternative Titles

A Volta de Jack, O Estripador, Η Επιστροφή του Τζακ, Red Rain, The Ripper, El regreso de Jack el destripador, 킬러 잭, 神秘的背影, Jack Rozparovač se vrací, Sur le fil du scalpel, El retorn d'en Jack, Le retour de Jack l'éventreur

Crime Mystery Horror Thriller

Thrillers and murder mysteries Intriguing and suspenseful murder mysteries Suspenseful crime thrillers Gory, gruesome, and slasher horror Twisted dark psychological thriller Gothic and eerie haunting horror Show All…

Releases by Date

06 may 1988, 01 sep 1989, releases by country.

• Physical 18 genauer Veröffentlichungstag unbekannt

97 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Brooke ★★★½ 1

Hot weirdo Spader is a genre I'll never tire of.

Review by Ian West ★★★½ 11

I closed my eyes and randomly picked a blu off my shelf, haven’t seen this in a couple of years so I said f it and popped it in. Worked much better for me this time around, plus I really needed a Spader fix (I’m sure some of you will understand)

Review by Christian Di Leo ★★½ 5

The director of Road House brings us a young James Spader playing hot and sweaty twin brothers who are trying to solve a string of Jack The Ripper copycat killings. Accompanied by a groovy 80s score, some tense moments and wall-to-wall sleaze, this puppy was right up my alley. Nothing special but definitely worth your time if you want your fix of serial killer thrills and chills.

👬🙆🏼‍♀️🩸🗡🎶🎷🎸🎹

Review by belial_carboni ★★★½ 2

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

A creepy little thriller starring everyones favourite party boi James Spader. Spader plays twins, a good wholesome humanitarian brother and a troublesome misunderstood bad boy brother. When the nice guy twin is murdered amongst several victims of a Jack the Ripper Copycat it's up to the bad boy Spader to solve his brothers crime. Will anyone trust the bad boi? Will his feathered hair and sweet leather jacket get him a girlfriend? Watch and find out!

Even though it's fairly campy I was surprised how enjoyable this was. Some good twists and turns, decent characters, stylish camera shots and two breath taking Spader performances made this a rainy day treat.

I could watch Spader drive his little convertible around the dark empty streets for days. Pure mood.

Review by kat🕷 ★★★½ 3

"Jack's Back" doesn't seem to be the best-known horror thriller of the 80s. I just watched it without having any expectations. Under this premise, the movie isn't that bad at all, you just need to be patient.

But the real crime here was the unbelievable attractiveness of young James Spader 🥵

Review by haley ★★★½ 1

james spader had no business being this fine

Review by Todd Gaines ★★★ 2

James Spader doesn't need a Blacklist, an office, or a courtroom to act his ass off. He owns this forgotten late 80's thriller. He doesn't have much help in regards to the other actors in the film, but it is fun to watch and it has a couple of great twists.

Review by Adam Nayman ★★ 1

This happened to my buddy Eric

Review by Edith ★★★½

CW: For thirsty Spader needs only (confirmed by the fact I mentioned watching this to my rental store clerk friend and she dropped into a dewey-eyed glance, “ oooh yes... Jack’s Back.. .”)

James Spader at his finest rocking the neo-expressionist patterned shirt with Miami Vice blazer into v-neck tee and leather jacket looking hard into the camera ... It can be tricky reconciling a really bad mystery plot with an intense aesthetic of TV movie thriller smokey rooms and dark misty en scene. Everything is damply lit fog billowing out of long cigarettes. The eighties are on full display and some decent camerawork to fit the mystery vibes.

If you’re saying to yourself, “ another Jack the Ripper rip-off. ..” well it’s a lot…

Review by matt lynch ★★★½

I've always liked Rowdy Herrington as a trashy pulp craftsman, at his best sort of a crass Walter Hill. This is appropriately dopey and satisfyingly meanspirited, and it concocts quite the amusing excuse to have James Spader do both his good boy and bad boy thing in the same movie.

Discussed on Episode 13 of The Suspense is Killing Us .

Review by Sally Jane Black

HOW MANY TWISTS CAN YOU FIT IN A MOVIE?

Review by theironcupcake ★★★½ 9

"If you wanna book me, BOOK ME!"

Spader-fest has officially begun!

Jack's Back gives me a lot to work with: a Jack the Ripper copycat killer commemorating the hundredth anniversary of those crimes in Los Angeles, James Spader x 2 as identical twins (you can tell which one is the bad boy since he has a scar and wears a leather jacket and single earring), a surprising amount of time spent on solving murders via psychic visions, Dr. Robert Picardo: Detective Hypnotist, Chris Mulkey as a cop investigating the plural Spaders, cinematographer Shelly Johnson making sure that most atmospheres are filled with moonlight, fog and cigarette smoke, very much like Gregg Toland working with neo-noir color. Now that I think…

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MOVIE REVIEW : Ripper Slashed in ‘Jack’s Back’ : MOVIE REVIEW : Century-Old Legend of the Ripper Gets Slashed Up in ‘Jack’s Back’

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“Jack’s Back” (citywide) is a psychological shocker that carves up the Jack the Ripper legend in convoluted but predictable ways. It’s set in a modern-day Los Angeles onto which a strange, nacreous half-fog seems to have descended, indoors and out. There, a copycat killer is duplicating the Ripper’s modus operandi to the last slash. And, though the opening of this movie looks typically sleazy-cheap--a sexpot quaking with fear while a maniac and a rock title theme close in on her simultaneously--first-time writer-director Rowdy Herrington tries to give it some quality.

He’s not really after cheap thrills. He wants to create an eerie mood; play with character; pump in some sociological detail. But Herrington gets stuck in his triple-twists, stock characters, chases and movie-movie plotting.

“Jack’s Back” is another shocker that fools around with the notions of doppelgangers, good and evil and psychological twinning. James Spader even plays twins here: John is a squeaky-clean clinic volunteer and champion of the homeless. Rick wears a black leather jacket and a tiny gold earring and gives long, meaningful carnal stares to the women. One or both are suspected of being the rip-off Ripper, and there’s another Jack prowling around giving abortions, as well as a lot of shifty-eyed fellow suspects, a daring ingenue, grotesquely rude doctors, bad dreams, hypnotists and some extremely natty police.

Spader has carved out a niche for himself in the last couple of years as Hollywood’s numero uno snob-creep preppie--in movies like “Pretty in Pink.” He’s perfect for these roles. He has the glassily cute blond looks, a face that seems to have its own built-in mirror--plus the lizard-lidded down-the-nose glance, the arch, contemptuous, bored drawl. Here, freed from his archetype, he has fun with the divided image: fluffing and sunning himself out for good John, getting faintly sweaty and nasty-eyed as bad Rick.

But beyond Spader’s performance, the only really interesting thing about “Jack’s Back” (MPAA rated: R for language and violence) is the lighting. Herrington is a longtime lighting technician and he and cinematographer Shelly Johnson make this shocker swim in twilit, smoky iridescence: marine blues, blurry golds and frosty greens. Against this swank rainbow, the blood is like a flash of designer red: moist but tactful.

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Jack’s Back (Blu-ray / Movie Review)

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The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review

Jack’s Back (1988)

Rating: ★★.

Director/Screenplay – Rowdy Herrington, Producers – Cassian Elwes & Tim Moore, Photography – Shelly Johnson, Music – Danny Di Paola, Makeup Effects – John Naulin, Production Design – Piers Plowden. Production Company – Elliott Kastner-Andre Blay/Palisades Entertainment.

James Spader (John Wesford/Rick Wesford), Cynthia Gibb (Chris Moscari), Robert Picardo (Dr Carlos Battera), John Wesley (Detective Sam Hilliard), Chris Mulkey (Detective Scott Morofsky), Rex Ryon (Jack Pendler), Rod Loomis (Dr Sidney Tannerson), Wendell Wright (Captain Walter Prentis), Jim Haynie (Sergeant Gabriel), Danitzka Kingsley (Denise Johnson), Bobby Hosea (Tom Dellerton), Kevin Glover (Neil Finchley)

Los Angeles is being terrorised by a series of killings that mimic the Jack the Ripper killings on the exact same dates the original killings occurred a century before. Police are baffled. John Wesford is a medical student working at a neighbourhood clinic. He goes to the apartment of a pregnant prostitute patient only to find one of his co-workers Jack Pendler there, having just killed her, the latest of the Ripper copycat killings. John gives pursuit back to the clinic, only for Jack to grab him in a noose and hang him. John’s twin brother Rick wakes from a dream in which he saw everything that happened and heads to the scene. In the aftermath, John is blamed as the Ripper copycat by the police. After Rick comes forth to try and clear his brother, the police begin to suspect that he might be the one responsible for the killings. At the same time, Jack attempts to eliminate Rick as a witness. Rick is forced to become a fugitive on the run as he attempts to find proof that Jack was the killer.

Jack’s Back came with a great pitch. It was released in the year that was the centenary of the Jack the Ripper murders and came with an attention-grabbing plot that featured a killer replicating the Ripper killings in the present-day. The idea of a Ripper copycat or The Ripper being resurrected in the present was also featured in other films like The Ripper (1985), Bridge Across Time/Terror at London Bridge (1985), Ripper: Letter from Hell (2001), Bad Karma (2002), The Legend of Bloody Jack (2007), The Lodger (2009), Razors (2016) and the first season of the tv series Whitechapel (2009). There was even the Star Trek episode Wolf in the Fold (1966) where The Ripper turned out to be an alien entity that took possession of Mr Scott.

The film appears to have not had sufficient budget to go to London to shoot, which would have made the idea work far better, and locates everything in L.A,. For that matter, the film appears to not have had the ability to even hire somebody to research the details of the Jack the Ripper case, which should have been available at any library back in the pre-internet era of 1988. Not that this matters too much as any connection to the Jack the Ripper killings is despatched with after the opening scenes and thereafter the film focuses less on the police trying to find the copycat than it does on the twin brother of the person framed for the crimes who goes on the run after being wrongly accused too.

Jack’s Back comes with some great promise – a Jack the Ripper copycat, a twin having a dream that exonerates his brother and contains the identity of the guilty party – but the delivery of such ends up being utterly routine. For one, the writing is sloppy. Apparently there was even less money to hire someone to research proper police procedure than there was to go to research the details of the Jack the Ripper killings – it may have escaped the writer’s notice but the evidence that has John listed as the killer is entirely circumstantial. Certainly, a young and then largely unknown James Spader is great as the handsome and principled doctor and his slightly more dishevelled and less reputable brother. (Even then, the script fails to give much reason why John has to go to the prostitute’s apartment in the first place).

Jack’s Back was a directorial debut for Rowdy Herrington who next went on to make the Patrick Swayze hit Road House (1989). Herrington has made a half-dozen other films since then, none of much distinction. His one other film that falls into genre territory was Striking Distance (1993), a Bruce Willis-starring action film featuring a serial killer.

The other Jack the Ripper films include:- those that conduct supposedly straight tellings of the details of the case such as Jack the Ripper (1959), the Spanish Jack the Ripper of London (1971) with Paul Naschy, Jess Franco’s Jack the Ripper (1976) with Klaus Kinski, Jack the Ripper (tv mini-series, 1988) starring Michael Caine, The Ripper (1997), the Alan Moore graphic novel adaptation From Hell (2001) with Johnny Depp, the German Jack the Ripper (2016) and Ripper Untold (2021). There are a number of other works that feature The Ripper as a central character like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), and its remakes The Lodger (1932), The Lodger (1944) and Man in the Attic (1953), as well as Room to Let (1950), although most of these vary widely from the known details. More prevalent have been speculative treatments, including the likes of:- having the contemporary but fictional figure of Sherlock Holmes solve the mystery in A Study in Terror (1965), Murder By Decree (1979) and Holmes & Watson: Madrid Days (2012); the Ripper being an alien spirit that possesses Scotty in Star Trek ‘s Wolf in the Fold (1966) and with similar stories occurring in episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-5) and The Outer Limits (1995-2002); the Ripper being Dr Jekyll in both Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) and Edge of Sanity (1989); Jack the Ripper’s daughter featuring in Hands of the Ripper (1971); H.G. Wells and the Ripper travelling through time to the present day in Time After Time (1979) and its tv series remake Time After Time (2017), as well as a time-travelling Ripper appearing in episodes of tv series like Fantasy Island (1977-84), Goodnight Sweetheart (1993-9) and Timecop (1997-8); The Ripper having travelled out West in the Knife in the Darkness (1968) episode of the Western tv series Cimarron Strip (1967-8) and the film From Hell to the Wild West (2017); a parody segment of Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) that speculates that the Ripper was in fact the Loch Ness Monster; the Babylon 5 episode Comes the Inquisitor (1995) that reveals the Ripper was taken up by aliens and redeemed; transposed to Gotham City in the animated Batman: Gotham By Gaslight (2018); even turning up as a character in the French animated film Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (2013). Also of interest is the tv series Ripper Street (2012-6), a detective series set in London in the immediate aftermath of the Ripper killings.

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Film review: jack’s back (1988).

Todd Martin 06/11/2018 Uncategorized

A copycat Jack the Ripper is stalking the streets murdering prostitutes. The police working the case don’t have a clue as to who is behind the murders but when a young doctor (James Spader) stumbles upon one of the victims he thinks he’s learned the killer’s identity. Unfortunately the killer then murders him to keep him quiet, but isn’t aware that the doctor has a street-wise twin brother who soon shows up and starts his own investigation into his brother’s death. Will he be able to stop the killer before he kills again, or is he going after the wrong person entirely?

I was surprised by how much I liked Jack’s Back. I vaguely remember my mom and dad watching it on VHS one Sunday night when I was a kid and I didn’t really care for it. I couldn’t really remember a lot about it other than the fact that I didn’t like it, so I was less than enthused about watching it again. It turns out though that it is actually an awesome movie with a lot of twists and turns that leave you guessing and I ended up really digging it. I think that the main reason I didn’t like it as a kid was because it didn’t feature some sort of unstoppable, masked killer taking out horny teenagers left and right and my pre-teen mind just couldn’t get into it as a result. Since I am old and wiser now (I hope I’m wiser, anyway) I found it to be quite entertaining and I am glad that I gave it a second chance. I had a blast with Jack’s Back and can’t believe that there was a time that I pretty much hated it.

I think that one of the strongest things going for this movie is the fact that it has a strong script and is very well-written. As I said earlier, there are a lot of twist and turns and once you think you have everything all figured out something happens to make you think twice. I think that it is funny that the identity of the killer seems pretty much a given at one point and them Bam! Out of nowhere something happens that makes you realize that the filmmakers have been screwing with you the entire time. I had fun trying to figure out who the killer was and I’ll admit that I was wrong. I thought for sure that it was a certain person but it wasn’t, and when the killer’s identity is revealed I was kicking myself for not being smart enough to figure it out.

I also liked the characters. I have always been a fan of James Spader (Tuff Turf is one of my favorites movies of all time) and he does a great job in this film. He plays a dual role since he is playing twin brothers, and he does a very good job of making you think that it is actually two different people. The doctor brother is the nice, easy-going guy that cares about others while the street-tough brother is a little more cynical and hard-hearted. I know that on paper it sounds like I am describing “good twin/bad twin” but that isn’t accurate. The characters are both genuinely good people but one of them is just a little more soured on the world than the other one. Spader is top-notch here and I think that he knocks it out of the park in his portrayal of both brothers. Genre semi-regular Robert Picardo is also good as the odd psychiatrist, and Cynthia Gibb is good in the role of the kind of love interest. I also think that the character of Sidney is good too just because he is your typical asshole boss that you want to punch in the face.

While it may not have the most original premise in the world I still thought that Jack’s Back was pretty damn good. I loved the overall 80’s vibe that it had to it (the music and clothing reeked of the late 80’s) and it made me miss the time period a little bit. There isn’t a great deal of blood and guts here but to be honest I didn’t really mind it due to the fact that I was so involved with the story and the action that was taking place. If you haven’t seen it and are in the mood for something that offers a neat little mystery then this movie is for you. Check it out, I guarantee you won’t be let down.

Bonus Features

• NEW High-Definition Transfer From The Original Negative
• NEW Audio Commentary With Writer/Director Rowdy Herrington
• NEW The Making Of JACK’S BACK – Interviews With Writer/Director Rowdy Herrington, Producer Tim Moore, Actress Cynthia Gibb And Director Of Photography Shelly Johnson
• Theatrical Trailer

Jack’s Back (1988) is now available on bluray per Shout Factory

Tags Anne Betancourt Chris Mulkey Cynthia Gibb Jack the Ripper Jack's Back James Spader Jim Haynie John Wesley Robert Picardo Rowdy Herrington

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Jack's Back Reviews

...an odd, amusingly hokey film that offers a few points of interest, namely the lead performance by James Spader as identical twins...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 23, 2021

Despite all of its shortcomings, James Spader makes Jack's Back watchable. He's got a charm and dedication that elevates the film's shortcomings.

Full Review | Jan 7, 2021

A quintessential dirty '80s thriller

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 26, 2016

The plotting is too haphazard to completely overcome any deficiencies.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 30, 2016

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 9, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 75/100 | May 4, 2002

It's not a great movie, but it's the kind of film that makes you curious about what Harrington will do next.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Jack's Back

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James Spader

John/Rick Wesford

Cynthia Gibb

Chris Moscari

Sgt. Gabriel

Rowdy Herrington

Cassian Elwes

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, jack reacher: never go back.

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Jack Reacher ( Tom Cruise ) isn’t a talky fellow. He’s a loner with no middle name and no fixed address. He lives in fleabag motels, gets around by hitchhiking, and tends to communicate with his fists, though only after repeated warnings have failed. He is not, to put it mildly, father or husband material.

So of course “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” based on Lee Child ’s novel, has the bright idea of outfitting Jack with a makeshift nuclear family consisting of a female Army major, Susan Turner ( Cobie Smulders ), who’s had a bloody conspiracy wrongly pinned on her, and a teenage girl named Samantha Dayton ( Danika Yarosh ), who might or might not be Jack’s daughter by a previous dalliance. This is the kind of setup that Clint Eastwood might’ve handled with aplomb back in the day—in fact, Eastwood’s early masterpiece " The Outlaw Josey Wales ," tells a thematically similar story about a loner who acquires a "family"—and although Cruise is diminutive compared to Eastwood, he does a credible version of Clint’s squint and hair-trigger lethality. His performance tries to delve deeper than the film will allow. We get a sense, more from watching Cruise than from any of the forgettable dialogue the character’s been given, that Jack inflicts violence because it’s the only thing he’s really good at; that it may in fact be his only form of cowardice—a means of running away from adult responsibilities—and that he has no idea what to say to a romantic partner or a child during quiet moments.

It’s a pity that “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” fails to support Cruise and his co-stars, all of whom are acting as if their lives depended on it. There’s a great movie buried somewhere in here—a strange but beguiling family comedy and a meditation on nature vs. nurture, with a bit of shooting and punching thrown in—but the filmmakers never figure out how to excavate it. There’s a touch of 1980s Hong Kong action cinema in the way that director Edward Zwick and his co-writer Marshall Herskovitz (rewriting Richard Wenk ’s script) juxtapose bone-breaking fisticuffs with deadpan-goofy scenes where Jack and Susan—who’s basically a female Jack, with the same anger-flexing jawline—struggle to protect and half-assedly parent Samantha as the trio runs from city to city, fending off assassins and trying to clear Susan’s name. But Zwick doesn’t have the Hong Kong wildness required to pull off that kind of film. He’s an intelligent director, but too earnest and careful for material like this.

There are a handful of genuinely funny moments in which Jack, Susan and Samantha—a street-tough kid whose mom was a prostitute and drug addict—fall into the familiar “Father Knows Best” patterns even though they’re holed up in a New Orleans hotel while trying to get to the bottom of an Afghanistan-based arms smuggling operation run by a Halliburton-type military contractor. None of them have experience behaving within a traditional mother-father-child configuration, so they’re a bit like actors who’ve been thrown into a play without the benefit of having read the script and are forced to improvise. Badly. Susan and Samantha’s version of mother-daughter bonding includes a tutorial on how to wrench a gun from a man’s hands and kick him in the testicles. When Samantha sneaks out without permission one night, Jack and Susan confront her when she returns, and Jack half-sputters, “Where were you?”

The sight of two skull-cracking soldiers failing to control a teenage girl is a good joke, and remarkably, it never gets old. Unfortunately, it never becomes something other than a joke, or an undeveloped notion. The movie is filled with undeveloped notions, as well as scenes that might’ve been dazzling, or at least clever, if Zwick and Herskovitz had been able to settle on a tone and a vision and develop them. Instead they march along with mild enthusiasm but no gusto, alternating dry-but-not-dry-enough comedy with action scenes that are competently executed but nowhere near as inventive and stirringly perverse as the best stuff in the original “Jack Reacher,” a likewise pretty-good military conspiracy thriller enlivened by Cruise’s junkyard dog sourness, a campy villain performance by Werner Herzog (who has no equivalent here, alas) and a couple of brilliantly staged close-quarters fights.

Zwick (who has told many military-themed stories, including “ Courage Under Fire ” and “ Glory ”) and Herskovitz (who teamed with Zwick on a series of great domestic dramas for TV, the best of which was “My So-Called Life”) can’t seem to decide if they want to lightly parody the subgenre of “burned-out killer rejuvenated by love” or embrace it without apology, even if it means alienating fanboys who are uncomfortable with any display of emotion that doesn’t involve Cap and Bucky. This confusion manifests itself in the film’s penultimate scene, a fated goodbye between Jack and Samantha that might’ve been heartbreaking had the filmmakers ended it thirty seconds earlier.

Cruise does some of his career-best acting in this scene; you can see Jack struggling to make his face and voice do what any natural father’s would do automatically, and failing miserably, because he’s either not wired that way or lacks the life experience required to fake it. There are moments where Cruise’s work here evokes Kurt Russell in “Soldier,” which is one of the best lead performances I’ve seen in a movie that was just barely OK. There’s fine supporting work by Aldis Hodge as a military police officer, Holt McCallany as an officer who’s up to no good, and Patrick Heusinger as an assassin who’s known only as The Hunter, and whose black trenchcoats and hipster facial hair suggest a Eurotrash cousin of Ryan Gosling . Smulders has a number of strong moments, too—and she drives home the idea of Susan as a female Jack by delivering stinging rebukes in a very Cruise-y “ A Few Good Men ” cadence—but she, too, is left to wander between the winds. There is nothing terrible about this film, yet it fails everyone involved with it. That’s the kind of magic trick that you don’t want to see.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film Credits

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, some bloody images, language and thematic elements

118 minutes

Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher

Cobie Smulders as Susan Turner

Aldis Hodge

Danika Yarosh

Patrick Heusinger as The Hunter

Austin Hébert as Prudhomme

Robert Catrini as Colonel Moorcroft

Robert Knepper as General Harkness

• Edward Zwick
• Richard Wenk
• Marshall Herskovitz

Original Music Composer

• Henry Jackman

Director of Photography

• Oliver Wood
• Billy Weber

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When Jack Came Back

By Alan Ng | October 18, 2022

When faced with an insurmountable challenge, it’s easy to feel alone. In writer-director Thor Moreno’s feature film,  When Jack Came Back , a down-on-his-luck actor must put his life on pause to care for his ailing mother.

Jack Davis (Mike Markoff) is a B-list actor who’s barely holding onto that status. He is out of the spotlight, and his Q-rating is plummeting — along with his attitude in general. Jack needs some luck before his agent, and girlfriend, drops him. Just as Jack’s fortune begins to turn, he gets a call that his father, Barry (Lance Henriksen), passed away, and Jack needs to return to the family farm and attend to his mother, Nancy (Lindsay Wagner).

The family reunion is a chilly one. Jack has not seen his parents since becoming famous in Hollywood. Nancy never forgave him for leaving. Either way, once he’s taken care of family business, Jack has a role waiting for him that he desperately needs to take. Of course, there are complications as Jack discovers that Nancy has Alzheimer’s Disease. Barry had been taking care of her with the help of their part-time caregiver, Debbie (Emily Ann Kincaid) and the stress probably led to his heart attack. So now Jack must decide between his career and his family.

“…there are complications as Jack discovers that  Nancy has Alzheimer’s Disease .”

When Jack Came Back   is a touching tale of a family coping with the degenerative disease of Alzheimer’s. The narrative is a bit too on the nose regarding Jack’s dilemma with his Hollywood career and responsibilities as a son. However, Moreno’s story is much more about bringing awareness to adult children’s struggle with caring for their parents.

Lindsay Wagner gives a fantastic performance as Nancy. She’s still got chops and elevates the performances of her co-stars, particularly lead Mike Markoff as Jack. Nancy needs constant supervision. She forgets to turn off the water for her bath and the stove in the kitchen. The final breaking point comes when Nancy almost burns down the barn.

Jack is now faced with trying to jumpstart his career while caring for or trying to find care for his mother. The task is a full-time job, and Markoff becomes the face of those facing a challenge that no one ever asked for. The battle for Jack becomes impossible dealing with family, work, and even the government.

A Lindsey Wagner performance should be enough to see  When    Jack Came Back . Moreno’s story is for anyone with family members dealing with Alzheimer’s Disease. The message is simple: you’re not alone.

For more information, visit the  When Jack Came Back  Facebook page .

When Jack Came Back (2022)

Directed and Written: Thor Moreno

Starring: Mike Markoff, Lindsay Wagner, Lance Henriksen, Emily Ann Kincade, etc.

Movie score: 7/10

"…a touching tale..."

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Review: Is the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black as bad as the internet would have you believe?

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson thinks Back to Black " probably is the best thing [she's] done ."

The biopic is the second film made about the iconic late singer Amy Winehouse. The first, directed by Asif Kapadia in 2015, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Pieced together with never-before-seen archival footage from Winehouse's teenage years, early performances and accounts from people close to Winehouse, Amy told the story of the uniquely talented young artist from beginning to end, using as many of her own words as possible.

In doing so, it captured the combination of humour, magnetism and raw emotion that Winehouse boldly poured into her work. And it showed the myriad forces that led to Winehouse's untimely demise at the tender age of 27, as the world scrutinised — and even laughed at — her substance use issues, eating disorder and heartbreak.

Taylor-Johnson's Back to Black is different in three significant ways.

Critics and fans have been wary of the film ever since its announcement, with that sense of trepidation growing following the release of the first set of photos — whereas Amy was released to acclaim from both camps . (Taylor-Johnson, who directed the 2009 John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, starring her now-husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson, told The Guardian she doesn't pay much attention to fan sentiment).

Back to Black has the support of the Winehouse estate , whereas the Amy documentary was publicly and repeatedly denounced by Winehouse's father , Mitch.

And Back to Black doesn't seek to tell the entire story of Winehouse's life or extremely public and harrowing death due to alcohol poisoning like Amy did.

Instead, it's a dramatised telling of the doomed love story between Winehouse (portrayed by relatively unknown actress Marisa Abela) and her ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O'Connell), relegating much of Winehouse's personhood and career to the background.

We're first introduced to a pared back, late-teenage version of Winehouse, sans-signature beehive and cat-eye, on the cusp of being handed her first record deal and producing her 2003 debut, Frank.

From the film's opening scenes, it's obvious Abela can at least hold a tune. The fact her vocal training for this film took place over just four months is even impressive. But she is not, and will never, possess anywhere near the same level of vocal talent as Winehouse, which is why Back to Black's attempt to pass her voice off as such is jarring.

Some have argued Abela's voice is of no consequence to the telling of this story. But it's hard to feel that way when Abela breaks into song in basically every scene, and when the authenticity of Winehouse's music was such a core part of her being.

And then there is the question of Abela's physical resemblance to Winehouse. Mitch Winehouse has made the admittedly fair point that Abela didn't need to look "exactly like Amy" to get the role, and Taylor-Johnson said the casting decision came down to the fact Abela didn't try to look or sound like Winehouse in any way.

"I had all these young women come in with either a hoop earring or cat eye or something," she said on The Jonathan Ross Show .

"Marisa had none of that. I was fiddling around with the camera, chatting with the casting director and I just looked in the lens and Marisa looked up and she completely transformed. She hadn't even said anything. I thought, 'That's her'."

But whatever transformation Taylor-Johnson saw in Abela in that audition room hasn't translated to her on-screen performance.

Abela's embodiment of Winehouse's performance style and mannerisms feels like a pale imitation of the star's brazenness and sensuality. And Abela's take on Winehouse's gloriously heavy North London accent is exactly what you'd expect someone educated at the 'Eton College of girls boarding schools' trying on a working-class twang to sound like.

Abela's portrayal becomes less distracting and feels slightly more natural when Winehouse and Fielder-Civil meet by chance at the legendary Camden pub, The Good Mixer, not long after Frank's success has turned her into a recognisable household name in the UK.

This is because Abela's chemistry is undeniable with O'Connell, who first made a name for himself as a 19-year-old playing the cheeky, impulsive and frequent drug user Cook on Skins. Here, he has no trouble bringing a similar level of charisma and a much-needed dose of working-class authenticity to this production.

It's in an off moment of their turbulent, drug-fuelled, sometimes violent, on-and-off relationship that Winehouse creates her second and final record — the masterful album that would catapult her to international levels of fame and critical acclaim she never thought she'd achieve, and feared she wouldn't know how to handle.

But we don't see much of Back to Black's creation — only a montage featuring Abela singing the titular track in a New York studio, coinciding with her nan Cynthia's wrenching death in London.

The film begins its final descent into sanitised darkness when Fielder-Civil calls her up again post-Back to Black success, and they begin using crack cocaine and heroin together . If the tabloids' paparazzi pictures of Winehouse during this period didn't make for grim enough content for you in real-time, rest assured Back to Black goes further, constructing its own vivid narrative of what this time was like for the people at the centre of it.

Fielder-Civil isn't painted as the villain in this story, for breaking her heart or for any role he may have had in her substance use. Neither is Mitch, who is portrayed throughout as Winehouse's loving but often oblivious cab driver father by Eddie Marsan. Besides, Taylor-Johnson told the Guardian she doesn't believe in "stupid one dimensional demon characters".

There are only two supposed villains in this story: The paparazzi and addiction.

Winehouse's experiences with bulimia don't quite make the cut, copping only a few minutes of screentime, despite the fact she lived with the eating disorder from her teenage years onwards, and the claims that have been made about the impact it may have had on her failing health.

From Winehouse's 2008 Grammys Record of the Year win for Back to Black, the film essentially flashes forward to a few months before her death, which is inconceivably skated over with a black screen listing the details at the very end.

So, that's what you'll get if you decide to pay to see the highly anticipated Back to Black at the movies. Alternatively, Amy is streaming for free on ABC iview .

Back to Black is in cinemas now.

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Back to Black

The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time.

• Sam Taylor-Johnson
• Matt Greenhalgh
• Marisa Abela
• Eddie Marsan
• Jack O'Connell
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• 50 Metascore

• Amy Winehouse

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• Trivia Marisa Abela had done most of the singing in this film herself. She trained extensively to mimic Amy Winehouse 's vocals.

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• Runtime 2 hours 2 minutes

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Taylor Swift Renews Her Vows With Heartbreak in Audacious, Transfixing ‘Tortured Poets Department’: Album Review

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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For where it sits in her catalog musically, it feels like the synth-pop of “Midnights,” with most of the feel-good buzz stripped out; or like the less acoustic based moments of “Folklore” and “Evermore,” with her penchant for pure autobiography stripped back in. It feels bracing, and wounded, and cocky, and — not to be undervalued in this age — handmade, however many times she stacks her own vocals for an ironic or real choral effect. Occasionally the music gets stripped down all the way to a piano, but it has the effect of feeling naked even when she goes for a bop that feels big enough to join the setlist in her stadium tour resumption, like “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”

The first time you listen to the album, you may be stricken by the “Wait, did she really just say that?” moments. (And no, we’re not referring to the already famous Charlie Puth shout-out, though that probably counts, too.) Whatever feeling you might have had hearing “Dear John” for the first time, if you’re old enough to go back that far with her, that may be the feeling you have here listening to the eviscerating “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” or a few other tracks that don’t take much in the way of prisoners. Going back to it, on second, fifth and tenth listens, it’s easier to keep track of the fact that the entire album is not that emotionally intense, and that there are romantic, fun and even silly numbers strewn throughout it, if those aren’t necessarily the most striking ones on first blush. Yes, it’s a pop album as much as a vein-opening album, although it may not produce the biggest number of Top 10 hits of anything in her catalog. It doesn’t seem designed not to produce those, either; returning co-producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner aren’t exactly looking to keep her off the radio. But it’s easily among her most lyrics-forward efforts, rife with a language lover’s wordplay, tumults of sequential similes and — her best weapon — moments of sheer bluntness.

Who is the worst man that she delights in writing about through the majority of the album? Perhaps not the one you were guessing, weeks ago. There are archetypal good guy and bad boy figures who have been part of her life, whom everyone will transpose onto this material. Coming into “Tortured Poets,” the joke was that someone should keep Joe Alwyn, publicly identified as her steady for six-plus years, under mental health watch when the album comes out. As it turns out, he will probably be able to sleep just fine. The other bloke, the one everyone assumed might be too inconsequential to trouble her or write about — let’s put another name to that archetype: Matty Healy of the 1975 — might lose a little sleep instead, if the fans decide that the cutting “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and other lacerating songs are about him, instead. He might also have cause to feel flattered, because there are plenty of songs extolling him as an object of abject passion and the love of her life — in, literally, the song title “LOML” — before the figure who animated all this gets sliced down to size.

The older love, he gets all of one song, as far as can be ascertained: the not so subtly titled “So Long, London,” a dour sequel to 2019’s effusive “London Boy.” Well, he gets a bit more than that: The amusingly titled “Fresh Out the Slammer” devotes some verses to a man she paints as her longtime jailer (“Handcuffed to the spell I was under / For just one hour of sunshine / Years of labor, locks and ceilings / In the shade of how he was feeling.” But ultimately it’s really devoted to the “pretty baby” who’s her first phone call once she’s been sprung from the relationship she considered her prison.

It’s complicated, as they say. For most of the album, Swift seesaws between songs about being in thrall to never-before-experienced passion and personal compatibility with a guy from the wrong side of the tracks. She feels “Guilty as Sin?” for imagining a consummation that at first seems un-actionable, if far from unthinkable; she swears “But Daddy I Love Him” in the face of family disapproval; she thinks “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” before an epiphany slips out in the song’s hilariously anticlimactic final line: “Woah, maybe I can’t.” Then the most devastating songs about being ghosted pop up in the album’s later going.

Now, that, friends, is a righteous tirade. And it’s one of the most thrilling single moments in Swift’s recorded career. “But Daddy I Love Him” has a joke for a title (it’s a line borrowed from “The Little Mermaid”), but the song is an ecstatic companion piece to “That’s the Way I Loved You,” from her second album, now with Swift running off with the bad choice instead of just mourning him. It’s the rare song from her Antonoff/Dessner period that sounds like it could be out of the more “organic”-sounding, band-focused Nathan Chapman era, but with a much more matured writing now than then… even if the song is about embracing the immature.

The album gets off to a deceptively benign start with “Fortnight,” the collaboration with Post Malone that is its first single. Both he and the record’s other featured artist, Florence of Florence + the Machine , wrote the lyrics for their own sections, but Posty hangs back more, as opposed to the true duet with Florence; he echoes Swift’s leads before finally settling in with his own lines right at the end. Seemingly unconnected to the subject matter of the rest of the record, “Fortnight” seems a little like “Midnights” Lite. It rues a past quickie romance that the singer can’t quite move on from, even as she and her ex spend time with each other’s families. It’s breezy, and a good choice for pop radio, but not much of an indication of the more visceral, obsessive stuff to come.

The title track follows next and stays in the summer-breeze mode. It’s jangly-guitar-pop in the mode of “Mirrorball,” from “Folklore”… and it actually feels completely un-tortured, despite the ironic title. After the lovers bond over Charlie Puth being underrated (let’s watch those “One Call Away” streams soar), and over how “you’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith,” an inter-artist romance seems firmly in place. “Who’s gonna hold you like me?” she asks aloud. (She later changes it to “troll you.”) She answers herself: “Nofuckinbody.” Sweet, and If you came to this album for any kind of idyll, enjoy this one while it lasts, which isn’t for long.

From here, the album is kind of all over the map, when it comes to whether she’s in the throes of passion or the throes of despair… with that epic poem in the album booklet to let you know how the pieces all fit together. (The album also includes a separate poem from Stevie Nicks, addressing the same love affair that is the main subject of the album, in a protective way.)

There are detours that don’t have to do with the romantic narrative, but not many. The collaboration with Florence + the Machine, “Florida!!!,” is the album’s funniest track, if maybe its least emotionally inconsequential. It’s literally about escape, and it provides some escapism right in the middle of the record, along with some BAM-BAM-BAM power-chord dynamics in an album that often otherwise trends soft. If you don’t laugh out loud the first time that Taylor’s and Florence’s voices come together in harmony to sing the line “Fuck me up, Florida,” this may not be the album for you.

When the album’s track list was first revealed, it almost seemed like one of those clever fakes that people delight in trolling the web with. Except, who would really believe that, instead of song titles like “Maroon,” Swift would suddenly be coming up with “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” “Fresh Out the Slammer,” “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”? This sounded like a Morrissey track list, not one of Swift’s. But she’s loosened up, in some tonal sense, even as she’s as serious as a heart attack on a lot of these songs. There is blood on the tracks, but also a wit in the way she’s employing language and being willing to make declarations that sound a little outlandish before they make you laugh.

Toward the end of the album, she presents three songs that aren’t “about” anybody else… just about, plainly, Taylor Swift. That’s true of “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” a song that almost sounds like an outtake from the “Reputation” album, or else a close cousin to “Folklore’s” “Mad Woman,” with Swift embracing the role of vengeful witch, in response to being treated as a circus freak — exact contemporary impetus unknown.

Whatever criticisms anyone will make of “The Tortured Poets Department,” though — not enough bangers? too personal? — “edge”-lessness shouldn’t be one of them. In this album’s most bracing songs, it’s like she brought a knife to a fistfight. There’s blood on the tracks, good blood.

Sure to be one of the most talked-about and replayed tracks, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” has a touch of a Robyn-style dancing-through-tears ethos to it. But it’s clearly about the parts of the Eras Tour when she was at her lowest, and faking her way through it. “I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday — every day,” she sings, in the album’s peppiest number — one that recalls a more dance-oriented version of the previous album’s “Mastermind.” It’s not hard to imagine that when she resumes the tour in Paris next month, and has a new era to tag onto the end of the show, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” might be the new climax, in place of “Karma.” “You know you’re good when you can do it with a broken heart,” she humble-brags, “and I’m good, ‘cause I’m miserable / And nobody even knows! / Try and come for my job.”

Not many superstars would devote an entire song to confessing that they’ve only pretended to be the super-happy figure fans thought they were seeing pass through their towns, and that they were seeing a illusion. (Presumably she doesn’t have to fake it in the present day, but that’s the story of the next album, maybe.) But that speaks to the dichotomy that has always been Taylor Swift: on record, as good and honest a confessional a singer-songwriter as any who ever passed through the ports of rock credibility; in concert, a great, fulsome entertainer like Cher squared. Fortunately, in Swift, we’ve never had to settle for just one or the other. No one else is coming for either job — our best heartbreak chronicler or our most uplifting popular entertainer. It’s like that woman in the movie theater says: Heartache feels good in a place like that. And it sure feels grand presented in its most distilled, least razzly-dazzly essence in “The Tortured Poets Department.”

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