This Friday, Prime Video will debut all eight episodes of Reacher, a series based on the popular Jack Reacher book series by Lee Child (a pseudonym for British author James Grant). Unlike the Tom Cruise films from a few years ago, this iteration kicks things off with an adaptation of the first Jack Reacher novel, The Killing Floor.
If you’re not familiar with the books or the movies, the title character is an ex-military badass who wanders around the United States (and occasionally other parts of the world). While this might seem like an odd way of life to most folks, his reason for living as a relatively well-adjusted drifter is due to an undeniable wanderlust. In his mind, Reacher shares a kinship with other people/cultures throughout history who couldn’t remain settled in front of just one fire.
Predictably, his travels result in him becoming involved in many deadly/exciting situations. Thankfully, Reacher has a vast array of knowledge, detective skills, and combat training to assist the locals of wherever he happens to be. For this particular adventure, he ends up getting involved in a small town murder with much higher stakes than anyone realizes — both to the Unites States government and him personally.
So how does it all play out on screen? Let’s take a mostly spoiler free look at Reacher‘s first season and see if it’s worth 7-8 hours of your streaming binge time.
The Story
Reacher (Prime Video)
One of the first things Reacher utters after he appears on screen is that “details matter.” Whether it’s tracking the location of a suspect or referring to midnight as “last night” instead of “this morning,” even the most minor details are worth getting right.
Unfortunately, this credo is completely at odds with how Reacher‘s narrative plays out.
The premise and eventual reveal of the mystery behind the murder is all types of fascinating, but the way it unfolds is riddled with inconsistencies. Aside from multiple leaps in deduction (which we’ll get to in a bit), the story often features absurd circumstances and events that are impossible to ignore. Shoot outs in front of hotels don’t bring any police presence/questions. Murders in the middle of a busy subway go unseen by people or cameras. Nervous characters who have never held a gun before manage to score perfect head shots.
While all this is going on, clues that should have been subtly foreshadowed are mercilessly beaten into our heads — so much so that it makes the otherwise adept main characters look incompetent when they don’t immediately seize on them.
The Characters
Reacher (Prime Video)
While most folks know what a Mary Sue is (a female character who’s so perfect that the lack of flaws makes her boring), they may not be as familiar with the male equivalent, known as a Marty Stu…and this version of Jack Reacher is the Marty-est of Stus.
Aside from being a perfect physical specimen, the man has extensive knowledge and skills to match every conceivable situation. His intellect is beyond genius, drawing from a wealth of accumulated information and utilized in a manner that always provides him with the right answer. Reacher’s deductive capabilities are even more impressive. In fact, they’re downright supernatural, allowing him to track a missing person based on their state of mind, their hobbies, and where they used to live — right down the the hotel room they’ve holed up in.
All this is packaged into a fighter whose hand-to-hand combat skills are matched only by his adeptness with firearms. Whether it’s a large caliber handgun or a neck tie, the most deadly weapon in the world can always be found in Reacher’s hands.
Reacher (Prime Video)
I’m not familiar with Alan Ritchson’s work, so I initially wondered if his wooden portrayal of the character was a deficiency on his part. But in the rare moments that Reacher is allowed to be more than a walking plot device, however, he actually does some really good work. So good, in fact, that it ends up frustrating the viewer even more at what the character could have been.
Combine that with Ritchson’s undeniable screen presence, and it’s hard to blame him for his character’s mostly bromidic impact on the narrative. If anything, he made this portrayal much better than it should have been.
Reacher‘s primary supporting characters, however, are fantastic.
Reacher (Prime Video)
From the moment Willa Fitzgerald introduces us to Officer Roscoe Conklin, it’s clear she has the believable human balance that Reacher lacks. The character is equal parts magnetic and formidable, all while revealing flaws that never threaten to dull her razor sharp demeanor.
Roscoe also provides the series with an authentic emotional core. Despite being impressively smart and capable, she still experiences and reacts to things that would rattle anyone. But instead of simply shrugging it off, she lashes out with relatable grief/anger before pulling back to focus on the job at hand.
If there’s one area her character doesn’t quite hit the mark, it’s the chemistry that’s supposed exist between her and Reacher. Fitzgerald and Ritchson give it their all, but the bond between the two never stops feeling forced.
Reacher (Prime Video)
When Malcolm Goodwin first appears on screen as Detective Oscar Finlay, he feels primed to be a walking fish-out-of-water trope. To Goodwin’s credit (and the screenwriters), his character ends up developing multiple layers that make him far more interesting than anticipated.
Goodwin also deserves a ton of credit for how well he portrays the begrudging dynamic that develops between him and the series’ lead. Unlike Roscoe and Reacher, the bond that forms between Finlay and Reacher is forged from much stronger and more believable stuff. They both have the same goals, but entirely different means of attaining them.
While that may still sound like the classic buddy cop cliche, the Finlay/Reacher pairing never makes an unearned leap into bromance territory. Even the kindest moments between the two are filled with reminders that they’re definitely not the sort who would be friends under any other circumstance.
Reacher (Prime Video)
Where things fall short is how much Finlay indulges his new frenemy. When Reacher does things that would cause even the most cowboy-esque cop to be concerned, the by-the-book detective just sighs and shakes his head like a parent learning that their kid lightly toilet papered a friend’s house.
That minor inconsistency is barely noticeable when you compare Roscoe and Finlay to the rest of Reacher’s cast.
The good-intentioned characters are all types of nervous and naive. The bad/evil ones are so rotten that you half expect them to be twirling a freshly grown mustache any time they appear on screen. Bruce McGill is normally great, but his portrayal of the town’s mayor makes Boss Hogg from Dukes of Hazard look downright subtle by comparison.
To be fair, there are a few standouts — like Maria Sten as Frances Neagley, a character who Jack Reacher fans will be very familiar with. Kristin Kreuk is also great as a mother caught in the middle of an explosive conspiracy who remains solely focused on protecting her family. Past them, however, the supporting cast often ends up outpacing the narrative at giving away who can and can’t be trusted.
The Execution
Reacher (Prime Video)
All those aforementioned issues aside, the cinematography on Reacher is absolutely gorgeous. That could just be my bias as someone who was born and raised in Georgia, but the series was filmed in Toronto and still made me feel like I was back home.
And besides, what we all really came to see was Jack Reacher in some awesome action sequences, right? Sadly, that might be the most disappointing aspect of the entire show.
I’m not saying every fight sequence needed to be the like the corridor brawl from Old Boy, but the fight scenes in Reacher have more edits/cuts than a late 90’s music video.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a fight clip that Amazon put out as a promotion for the series. The longest it goes without a cut is five seconds — and that’s an extended outlier. It’s also about as good as it gets from all eight episodes.
Reacher also exhibits shifting strength/combat skills that are hard to keep up with. He’ll wipe the floor with three guys only to have some scrawny dude without any discernible advantage nearly take him to the mat. It’s almost as if the show’s writers decided that the last thug remaining in any brawl had to be treated like a video game boss.
Luckily for Reacher, he has that superhuman strength I mentioned a bit ago. The dude can come out of an intense beating with little more than a sexy scar or two.
Reacher’s extraordinary durability stretches far beyond any believable level of toughness. Things like concussions and chemical smoke inhalation are shrugged off while everyone around him writhes in mortal anguish. By the second episode, it’s nearly impossible to feel any concern for his well-being no matter how dire the circumstances are.
The Verdict
Reacher (Prime Video)
The most frustrating thing about Reacher is that there’s a great series in here somewhere. If the show had a dumb plot and terrible main characters, it could simply be written off as another vapid lone wolf action story. Instead, the show’s aggressive mediocrity is interrupted by brief glimpses of what could have been something special.
If anything, this series made me want to read the novels, which I’ve been told are highly entertaining from a wide variety of readers. Perhaps the character psychology and plot development translates better on page than on screen. That being said, there have been plenty of other action/adventure book franchises that have been successfully adapted into other media properties. This one, on the hand, appeared to have all the right ingredients and still managed to fall short.
Although it would contradict the source, a continuation of the streaming series might be better served by keeping with the same cast — assuming Reacher even gets a second season. A change in setting and characters would almost certainly mean another slog through a narrative nowhere near as good as it could have been.
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