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Reacher is back. And all’s well with the world. Or will be, as soon as he and his three pals– whose bonds go back to the time when they were in the military together–rumble the bad guys, destroy them, and, as best-selling author Lee Child has them succinctly declare, ‘piss on their ancestors’ grave.’ End of matter.
In season one, we were introduced to Alan Ritchson, who instantly fixed the major problem with the two feature films in which Tom Cruise tried being Jack Reacher: Ritchson was six feet plus, as big horizontally as he was vertically, just the way Child’s eponymous hero ought to have been, instead of the compact Cruise.
It was impossible to buy the suave Hollywood star as the big-as-a-boardwalk ex-Army drifter who lives rough, packs a toothbrush as his only luggage, refuses to be tied down by real estate-and-paperwork, and roams around the US countryside, passing through small towns in which live big villains, dealing with them the only way he knows how: getting in his massive blow, or head-butt, first.
In season 2, based on Child’s 11th novel ‘Bad Luck And Trouble’, and developed by Nick Santora, he looms even larger, and is as fearsome. This time around, things have got personal: a member of his old Army unit has been murdered in the most brutal fashion, and it looks like someone has it in for the rest of them. Back when they were a tightly-knit band, they had a saying: you do not mess with the Special Investigators. Now someone clearly has, and as far as Reacher is concerned, that’s the end of that someone. Or someones.
The three friends who get together with Reacher on this mission are remnants of that old unit. Their addition makes things more interesting, especially when we need a bit of chatter in between all the action: thumping people with his bare hands is the big man’s forte; he leaves conversation to other people. Frances Neagley (Maria Sten), whom we met briefly in the first season, is back with her sharp sleuthing instincts: David O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos) as the spiffy knife-man, and Karla Dixon ( Serinda Swan) as the numbers whizz, slip into step smoothly, as we follow them from New York to Vegas and all kinds of places in between as they start tracking those who killed their friends.
In the first season in early 2022, we got all the episodes at once. This new series has launched with three episodes together, followed by one every week. Five episodes down, three to go, and we’ve had one-on-one combats, car crashes, gun battles, cops-hot-the-trail-of-Reacher, a very bad guy leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, fancy weapon prototypes, dirty drugs dealers, bent arms manufacturers. Bone-crunching, blood-spraying, hit-’em-till-they-are-dead fast-paced scenes follow each other: the story-telling is basic, but it gets the job done without wasting any time, and it’s all just as it should be, for Reacher fans. We’re going to do a whole lot of cowboy shit, declares Reacher, as the fifth episode comes to an end, and that’s exactly what I’m here for.
While I wait impatiently for the next, and the next, I’m back to re-reading the book, and it is as much of an adrenalin-pump as it always is.
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