Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice … and you know how the rest goes.

Today in Paris I went to see Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, the second movie based on the Reacher character in Lee Child’s novels, and again starring Tom Cruise as Reacher.

And, again, we learned that Cruise may be playing a character named Reacher but he will never, ever be Reacher to the millions of readers who know the Child character down to his preference for Army coffee. Black.

The nub of this?

“Never Go Back” has a few interesting moments as a movie, but Reacher fans will again come out of the theater spluttering mad at the ridiculous casting of Cruise. Again.

Cruise never manages to convey the menace we would feel from the book character. Some of that is about size. Reacher is described as 6-foot-5 and anywhere from 240 to 250 pounds of muscle.

Cruise, of course, is closer to 5-foot-5 than 6-5, and you can’t not notice that.

Too, the two movies we have seen so far have not done a good job of making clear how odd Reacher is. All his peccadilloes are what makes him what he is: A supremely curious and rational individual who has looked at life from another viewpoint and has decided his way makes a lot more sense than the world’s way.

He does the arithmetic and can demonstrate it is more interesting but also cheaper to live on the roads of the U.S. than in a fixed home. (Insurance, tax bills, lawns, clothes, appliances, etc.) Thus, he wears a set of clothes for three or four days and then buys more new cheap denim pants and work shirts and throws out what he had been wearing.

He also cares deeply about the little guy who is getting pushed around, whether it be by government entities or just very unsavory criminals, and is prepared to do violence to make it happen.

Child, the author, takes great care in describing the moves Reacher makes when he invariably is pitted against X number of big and bad guys. He headbutts this one, the “alpha” attacker, then pivots and hits the next with an elbow … Child can go on for paragraphs in his descriptions of fisticuffs.

Moviedom’s Reacher gets hit back. A lot. Book Reacher is rarely hurt.

In this movie, Reacher gets hit more than Muhammad Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle. He is severely battered, in the movie, several times, because that is what we expect from movies — if not from Reacher. Give and take in fights.

Again, this Reacher just bounces back from getting battered almost as badly as the guys he has taken down. Which is more unreality from the Cruise character. In “Never Go Back”, Cruise as Reacher makes one concession to having been hurt — a two-inch cut on the left side of his face that he wears throughout the movie like a badge.

Some people might even like this movie just for what it is — an action pic with bad guys getting their just desserts, with the requisite shootouts, martial arts and car chases.

Just don’t call it a “Reacher” movie, because we haven’t had one made yet.

Years ago, I suggested Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to play the role. I still would like to see that, and Johnson, 44, is a decade younger than Cruise, who is 54 and looks it.

It could be someone else, if they make another Reacher movie, as long as he passes the basic eye test of the Reacher we know so well — he is big, he is imposing the moment he walks into a room and he hates knives.

Until then, the world may be stuck with Tom Cruise, who is going to make at least another Reacher, but going forward … well, I won’t be fooled again.