Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Reacher’ on Amazon Prime, A Fun, Pulpy Yarn About A Guy Who Walks And Fights To His Own Beat

Tom Cruise who? While Maverick once brought author Lee Child’s Jack Reacher character to life in two decent action films, the heads who go back with the book series have taken to the Internet in droves to proclaim Amazon Prime Video’s Reacher as more faithful to the bestselling novels in the size and shape of the titular ex-military investigator. Amazon is also touting Reacher as its #1 series. So what’s all the fuss about?

REACHER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Two silenced gunshots, a body thudding to the earth, and we come up on a man running through the tall reeds shifting beneath a highway overpass. Another pfft pfft from a silenced 9mm, and the guy disappears into darkness of the underbrush.

The Gist: When the large man with no baggage gets off the interstate bus from Tampa at the little burg of Margrave, Georgia, he has an appetite for peach pie and blues music, not murder charges. But before anybody can say Mississippi Fred McDowell, Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) is being arrested at gunpoint by two jumpy local cops. The officer who books him is firm, but at least a little nicer – Roscoe Conklin (Willa Fitzgerald) is intrigued by this imposing stranger with the calm demeanor who has no driver’s license or social media profile and only carries a passport, folding toothbrush, and petty cash. Chief Detective Oscar Finley (Malcom Goodwin) isn’t intrigued, he’s pissed off. There were two murders last night, and this giant guy is said to have been spotted by the scene of the crime. For his part, Reacher lets the law huff and puff. He knows he’s innocent. Well, innocent of these murders in Margrave, anyway.

Before long, Finley has tapped into Reacher’s insights as a decorated former military police investigator. The killings seem to have been the work of a professional, but some of the evidence doesn’t match that theory. Finley has Reacher tossed in jail for safe-keeping, which turns out to be less than safe for the group of gen pop hard cases who jump Reacher in the bathroom. The cops might not know what to make of him, but Margrave’s criminal element has clearly got Reacher in its sights.

Free on his own recognizance, Reacher takes a walk around the town with Officer Roscoe, who’s curious about his existence as a solitary wanderer. For years, the military told him what to do and where to be. Now retired, Reacher says he likes seeing the country on his own terms. And that’s great, but his troubles in Margrave are far from over. The shady corporation which runs things around here has him tapped as an interloper, he’s still on the Margrave PD radar, and worse yet, there’s another murder. “Trouble kinda seems to find you,” somebody tells Reacher early on. And this time, it’s found him in Margrave.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Reacher showrunner Nick Santora was a writer and producer on the mid-aughts Fox hit Prison Break, and co-created and wrote its follow-up Breakout Kings, about a rangy bunch of criminals who the U.S. Marshals recruit to recapture prison escapees, and Reacher has similarities to both of those shows in its pulpy premise and self-contained action setups.

Our Take: Reacher’s tone is set immediately and effectively with an intro full of inky lighting, gunshot bodies tumbling, and an unknown gunman carefully retrieving his spent shell casings. This has been the stuff of paperback crime novels for ages, and establishes the pulpy bona fides of this adaptation of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels. A show like this isn’t going to work without effective casting, though, and Reacher already seems to have scored there, too. Alan Ritchson has the physical attributes to match the character on the page, and Reacher delights in framing him as double panel large in numerous single panel spaces. But Ritchson illuminates his inner life, too. Reacher is sharp, perceptive, and direct, but he’s possessed too of a sly wit and the natural ease of a conversationalist. There’s another interesting facet of the character. Sometimes, individuals with training and skills bend over backward to avoid an altercation. That’s not Reacher. It’s evident that he was trained to fight, that he savors a fight, and that he’s really damn good in a fight. Twice he gives an opponent a three-count to walk away and drops the guy on the numeral two. With the right person, Reacher’s a talker. With the wrong person? “If you guys knew what was about to happen to you,” he tells a group of wannabe ass kickers, “you’d leave now.”

Ritchson also pairs well with the law in Margrave, from Malcom Goodwin (iZombie, Breakout Kings) as fastidious but smart chief detective Oscar Finley to Willa Fitzgerald’s cool, collected Officer Conklin. And in later episodes, Reacher promises the incomparable Bruce McGill as Margrave’s corrupt mayor, Grover Teale.

Sex and Skin: A couple of cons’ butts appear as they slink and scurry out of the shower room ahead of the big prison beatdown.

Parting Shot: Finley and Roscoe are driving back to the station from the morgue, where Margrave’s newest murder victim has revealed a personal connection to Reacher. “What are you gonna do?” Finley asks, eyeing Reacher in the rearview. Oh, that’s simple. “I guess I’ll find everybody responsible, and kill every last one of them.”

Sleeper Star: Willa Fitzgerald, recent recipient of Woman Crush Wednesday honors here at Decider, is terrific in Reacher as Officer Roscoe Conklin. Roscoe’s interest in Reacher is piqued from the moment she books him into the Margrave Police Department, and it seems clear that she’ll become an ally. But let’s get this straight: she also isn’t gonna take any shit from him or anyone else.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I didn’t kill anybody. At least not recently. And not in this town.” In the moment, Reacher’s admission to Detective Finley is both bold and factual – it educates the cops on where he’s been, as well as where he never was. It also suggests to the viewer what might very soon become a false statement.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Reacher is already flexing its genre muscles with small town cops, unsolved killings, and plenty of shady doings for its compelling titular character to become embroiled in.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges