One of the guilty cinematic pleasures of 2012 was the Tom Cruise action vehicle, Jack Reacher. Concerning a roving ex-US army major with a Purple Heart, Service Star medal, and a whole lot of grudges against people who do bad things, it brought us back to the Tom Cruise of A Few Good Men, as opposed to, say, the morally complicated war vet Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July. Reacher was a drifter who righted wrongs, usually by breaking many people’s arms in quick succession. It didn’t ask for much from an audience, just as Reacher’s emotional range was limited to Reserved and, well, Very Reserved.

It was refreshing to see Cruise inhabit another vehicle franchise outside of the timeworn but perennial Mission: Impossible series. It didn’t do big US box office, but resonated in (increasingly important) overseas markets. And it proved that, despite controversies and odd Oprah moments, Cruise worked best as an inscrutable action hero.

They don’t get much more inscrutable than Jack Reacher. In the sequel, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (based on the Lee Child bestseller), Cruise is older, paunchier, his years showing but his lethal talent for breaking various limbs still intact. Like Jason Bourne, Reacher prefers hand-to-hand combat, for that comforting sound of bones snapping, though he’s not averse to the occasional bullet-inflicted death.

Here, he’s paired with Military Police Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders) who’s wrongly accused of treason. Reacher’s no lawyer, but he knows someone’s framing Turner, and he means to find out who’s behind it all.

Complicating things is the existence of a possible 15-year-old daughter named Samantha, played by young Danika Yarosh. (Reacher’s not sure he remembers even dating the mother, but he’s been tagged by the MPs as a deadbeat dad).

When a bad fellow simply credited as The Hunter (Patrick Heusinger) shows up, you know that the noose will start tightening around Reacher and those he’s trying to protect. As with most villains in such movies, Heusinger sports a vaguely Eurotrash look involving a beard, black driving gloves and a lethal aim with a weapon. Various promises are exchanged between Reacher and The Hunter involving the painful death of said young-girl-who-could-be-Jack’s-daughter, and the reciprocal painful breaking of said Hunter’s limbs and neck, in that order.

This sounds awfully clichéd, but it’s actually kind of entertaining. When you’re on the verge of a US presidential election that has set new markers for how much horror one can stomach as an American, it’s actually very refreshing to get off the roller coaster of political turmoil and enjoy a fantasy in which a troubled drifter and his formidable female partner are allowed to right wrongs, at least in the confines of a moviehouse.

So for two hours, we get to enjoy the Jack Reacher approach to problems: “How you doin’?” Cruise chummily chirps, just before smashing his forearm through the driver’s window of an SUV and grabbing the driver’s weapon. “I don’t like being followed,” he informs the two SUV-surveilling dudes before smacking them around a bit, dismantling the gun, and tossing their car keys in the grass. Zen lives.

In British author Child’s novels, Reacher has a bit more backstory and scaffolding than director Ed Zwick’s sparse and terse narrative allows. Jack’s a born drifter, the one guy out of 100 who “doesn’t prefer the comfort of the campfire.” Instead, he tends to roam, hoisting a thumb in the air and hitchhiking from state to state, occasionally tipping off MPs to bad guys, as he does in the opening sequence — the typical Zen Reacher moment, disabling a half dozen assailants outside a diner and then sitting down calmly for a cup of coffee until the authorities arrive.

Reacher himself remains an enigma. Even Jason Bourne had the occasional flashback to fill in the blanks of his character. Jack’s basically a return to Hollywood’s Strong Silent Type, an archetype that goes way back to the Westerns, but still returns to the screen on occasion. Cruise himself is showing his years, but still pulls off the action and stunts with professional aplomb.

Reacher’s moves as an MP are legendary to his fellow soldiers, and Turner’s a bit of a fan, but as their mission develops, the movie wisely chooses to empower the women as well. Reacher and Turner take Samantha on the run, fearing she’ll be eliminated by assassins trying to draw Reacher out in the open, but she proves pretty resourceful herself; and Turner bristles when Reacher insists he’s the one who must do all the limb-breaking and head-thumping. Soon she, too, is allowed to bust a few heads, which, in Hollywood, counts as some kind of progress.

Mostly, they resemble a modern insta-family, holed up in a New Orleans fleabag hotel, trying to track down a former soldier witness who can clear Turner. The joke is, neither Reacher nor Turner know how to talk to a modern 15-year-old girl, let alone discipline her. It’s easier for them to go out and bust a few heads than stick around and try to bond.

If Cruise had simply played an alpha male stereotype here, the movie would be less watchable. Instead, you get hints of his inner turmoil, with little concrete info; fortunately, Smulders is up to the task of playing a tough MP who can stand up to the mansplaining (she was, after all, an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the Avengers movies).

None of this character subtext ever threatens to get in the way of a fast-paced story that has very little on its mind beyond reassuring you that Jack Reacher’s on the case, he unfailingly knows right from wrong, and that many limbs will be snapped until justice and order are restored. If only American politics — and the real world — were that simple.