Jack Reacher: Never Go Back sees several cuts to match Nihalani's high sanskari standards

Tom Cruise is back as Jack Reacher for Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, the sequel to the original 2012 film based on Lee Child’s fictional tough guy who doesn’t like to play by the rules. The sequel has director Edward Zwick collaborating with Tom Cruise again; the two had worked on The Last Sumarai more than a decade ago in 2003. [caption id=“attachment_571414” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Tom Cruise as Reacher. Image courtesy: AP[/caption] The film also stars Cobie Smulders (Robin from How I Met Your Mother) in a lead role. She plays Susan Turner, Reacher’s friend and reporting officer who is accused of espionage. The hard-nosed hero will not grace the Indian cinema screens in original form though; courtesy Pahlaj Nihalani and our Central Board of Film Certification. The film has been ‘cleaned up’ to measure the up to CBFC’s high ranking Sanskari standards, facing many cuts which make it free of violence and middle fingers. A  DNA report quoted a source as saying that CBFC perceives Tom Cruise to be a global phenomenon and hence, “He can’t talk like Trump. The Board wants kids to watch Cruise’s new film. All the cusswords had to go,” The censor board has also cut a line out where Cruise says, “His a** is mine.”, which according to the DNA source must have had homosexual conotations for the CBFC, “They must’ve thought it was a gay proposal. They probably didn’t know it is a common threat for putting an adversary in his place.” The report also stated that the film’s distributors (Viacom18) were fine with the cuts because they didn’t think it will affect the popularity of the Tom Cruise starrer. Last year, CBFC made headlines when Daniel Craig’s Spectre had its kissing scenes cut to get a U/A certificate. This didn’t affect its box office collections though; the film made Rs 30 crore in opening weekend in India.