Bryan Alexander

USA TODAY

Tom Cruise and Cobie Smulders got it on for Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. But we don't get to see it.

The allegedly smokin' love scene was cut from Never Go Back, which hits theaters Friday.

According to Smulders, her Major Susan Turner character and Cruise's Jack Reacher had the hot moment during a forced stay in a posh New Orleans hotel while the two were on the run from lethal killers in the thriller. In Hollywood, that's the cue for sex.

"We shot a whole scene. I don’t know what the decision was to leave it out," says Smulders.

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Director Edward Zwick says the scene slowed down the action (outside of the bedroom, that is). And it was a little too Hollywood predictable: two beautiful people fleeing assassins falling into the sack together.

"Those kinds of scenes tend to slow it all down. And it felt a little on-the-nose and clichéd," says Zwick. "We just decided (to) make it a little bit more authentic."

Zwick insists the scene was "pretty good, I've got to say. It's pretty smokin.' "

He says he would consider adding the scene to the eventual Never Go Back DVD release. "I have never done something like that before, but it's an interesting thought."

Smulders has her own theory as to why the lovin' was cut. The two characters are soldiers and that hanky-panky doesn't happen in the foxhole.

"If we were comrades in combat together, and truly equals, there wouldn’t be flirtation," says Smulders. "I know this is movies and Hollywood, but the whole sexual tension wouldn’t happen. We have other things on our minds."

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A scene that did make the movie involves Reacher and Turner disrobing in a motel after a brutal fight with the film's foes. This scene made sense, says Smulders.

"It was like we were dudes in the locker room," says Smulders of her and Cruise taking their shirts off. "I have to look at my bruises. That would be a thing. It comes back to being equals and part of a unit."

She swears filming it wasn't awkward at all.

"Luckily, because Tom and I got along so well, I never felt like, 'My God, I have to walk around in my bra around Tom Cruise.' "