Actor Cobie Smulders and director Edward Zwick on the return of Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher returns in Never Go Back, with Tom Cruise this time fighting for justice alongside Avengers star Cobie Smulders in the sequel to the 2012 hit.

Tom Cruise and Cobie Smulders. Mike Coppola / Getty Images / AFP

When Tom Cruise calls, directors listen. Edward Zwick, however, was cautious when the Hollywood star rang him to discuss a follow-up to 2012's Jack Reacher.

While that rather underrated action-thriller was helmed by Christopher McQuarrie, Cruise wanted a different director for the sequel, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.

“My first instinct was: ‘I don’t know – I’ve never done anything like that: a sequel’,” says Zwick. “[Cruise] said: ‘Read the book’.”

The book in question is Lee Child's 2013 novel Never Go Back, the 18th in the hugely popular Jack Reacher series (the 21st, Night School, is due next month). Reacher – a former Major in the military police – is still a drifter, solving crimes and righting wrongs. Here, he returns to his former army base, where his replacement, Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), has been arrested on suspicion of espionage after two soldiers turn up dead in Afghanistan. Reacher suspects she is innocent.

Zwick, director of Glory and Blood Diamond, suggests that his film is different from a typical sequel "because the settings are different, the situations are different, the characters are different".

Indeed, aside from Cruise, who returns as Reacher, no characters from the first film return.

“A lot of superhero sequel movies, they resemble each other greatly,” says Zwick. “I think it might be nice if [this] resembles the previous one a little bit less.”

The feeling is that Never Go Back is an old-school action movie, about more than on-screen carnage. True, Cruiser is still a bruiser, frequently taking out multiple bad guys, but it at least attempts to get under the skin of the audience.

“I do feel that Reacher has a lot of great character moments, and that’s mainly because of Ed Zwick,” says Smulders, “because he’s such a great writer and feels that the characters are as important as the action”.

A case in point is Reacher’s relationship with Sam – a teenager who may or may not be his daughter – who ends up on the run with him and Turner.

“She has all of the same interests as Reacher,” says 18-year-old newcomer Danika Yarosh, who plays the role. “Their characters are very much alike. Sam is basically Reacher in teenage girl form, even down to the thought process. She is very tough, very smart and independent.”

Zwick, who previously directed Cruise in The Last Samurai, watched his star deliver a more "internal performance" than fans might be used to.

“I think it hearkens back to some of his best work in a way,” says Zwick. “I do admire him going with the flow of what studio movies have become, but I think he has real nostalgia and yearning for some of the performances and movies he was able to make in his career.”

For all this talk of character, Never Go Back still throbs with action-packed set pieces. For Smulders, who frequently has to watch other cast members do the fighting while starring as Agent Maria Hill in Marvel's Avengers movies, it was a baptism by fire.

Just before she was cast, she fractured her leg when she tripped in her apartment.

“It worked out that I got off the crutches a week before I started training,” she says. “It was like the best physiotherapy in the world – and it was free.”

Even after two months of intense physical preparation, Smulders was nonetheless worried about her stamina.

“There are a couple of sequences in this film where it’s me and Tom [running] – and Tom is very fast,” she says. “Luckily, they wanted my character to be in the lead. So I got to set the pace. We were just running for three days straight.”

As Smulders tweeted to Cruise recently: “So much fun making Jack Reacher … but so much running, Tommy. Just so much running.”

• Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is in cinemas now