The wildly successful Prime Video series REACHER is essentially a modern-day western. Jack Reacher is a stoic, lone hero who wanders into an unfamiliar town. He gets caught up in some trouble there and rights the wrongs. Then he leaves, moving on to the next town and his next adventure. It worked for John Wayne. It worked for Clint Eastwood. And it works for Alan Ritchson, who plays Reacher in this 21st-century version of the strong, silent type who speaks softly and carries a big stick. Or in this case, guns – – as in his ridiculously muscled arms.
For three seasons, it has played exceptionally well, and for the most part, it works in season four that premieres August 12th on Amazon. However, this season goes much, much bigger by adding three sidekicks, elaborate set-pieces, gorier violence, and a ton of locations. It’s all well-executed, save for some cartoonish villains, but it has the flavor of a show that knows it’s a big success and therefore is trying to top what’s been done before. And yet, in Reacher’s case, the simpler, the more concentrated, and the less crowded, the better.
The fourth season starts promisingly with Reacher trying to stop a distraught woman on a Philadelphia subway from committing suicide. He fails, but as he tries to figure out why she killed herself, he’s dragged into a conspiracy that becomes more and more involved as the eight episodes go on. Most of it is fairly intriguing, as Reacher meets and reluctantly partners with a smart Philly detective (Sydelle Noel), the deceased woman’s cop brother (Chris Marquette), and, for comic relief, a wily hacker/online journalist (Kevin Weisman).
Soon, these four are running all over the City of Brotherly Love, let alone the Eastern seaboard, trying to figure out what was on the jump drive that the deceased woman stole from her secret government job, and fighting off all kinds of nasty folks willing to slaughter and kill for it. That uptick in violence tempers a lot of the fun this season, as does having Reacher forced to deal with his ‘team.’ They are more like distractions, and those cohorts are given far too much screen time. I understand that much of the source novel for this season, entitled Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child, was written with all those additional characters taking up parts of the plot, but it mars the lone-cowboy idea that Reacher represents. And they’re just not as interesting as he is.
Ritchson continues to be great as Reacher, formidable, clever, and dominating every scene he plays. And whether he’s cracking wise or cracking skulls, or for that matter, taking his sweet time, almost shuffling about as he walks through a scene, he’s mesmerizing. Often hilarious. It’s a great comic performance, ridiculously eccentric and oddball, almost like Columbo with muscles. Noel and Weisman lend able support and up the humor quotient as well with their comic timing, from double takes to a way with a witty line. Maybe because of so much humor, the screenwriters felt the need to make the fights more brutal, the deaths more gruesome, and the stakes far heavier, but it throws this season off being so contradictory: too complicated, overly silly, and yet, very often, darkly harrowing.
I’m sure the audience will eat most of it up with a spoon, but it would be wise for the makers of REACHER to simplify things for their already-greenlit season five. Reacher is a great character, but I don’t think he should play as well with others as he does this time around. A surlier, singular hero is needed for this show, particularly with a man whose physical presence already feels threefold. And especially for this modern western.
