Earlier this month, the news broke that Reacher, Amazon's TV series based on the character from the best-selling series of novels, has been recommissioned for a second season. It's not hard to see why, with generally favorable reviews from critics and some of the best viewing figures for an Amazon drama series. Alan Ritchson's hypermasculine portrayal of the former army major turned vigilante dispenses justice Clint Eastwood style yet cares about women's freedoms and race equality.
Not merely a loner, Reacher is actually quite lonely. The character's creator Lee Child once commented, "In my experience as a person, the people who I've met who are the most likely to become those lonely wanderers are ex-military. I wanted a lonely man, alienated, and therefore his background was likely to be ex-military." Reacher represents a new take on the Lone Ranger character that is the stock-in-trade of so many blood-and-guts action thrillers.
Here is why Reacher is the perfect adaptation of the Jack Reacher books.
Alan Ritchson Is Not Tom Cruise
You'd have to be living in a cave not to be aware of Tom Cruise's impressive bona fides as an action hero. Even as he reaches the age at which most actors pass on action-heavy roles (he turns 60 in July), Cruise is still doing back-flips, snapping the bad guy's neck, and saving the day. We expect all of this and more in the seventh installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise, which is currently in post-production with an anticipated release date of July 2023 (an eighth and final installment is reportedly being filmed).
And yet his performances in Jack Reacher (2012) and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) never quite energized either critics or fans of the book series. Part of it had to do with his stature. While Cruise passed muster as Reacher, many felt that the actor simply didn't have the physical presence to offer a faithful portrayal of a character who is described in the novels as a hulk of a man, a former military policeman who is "extremely tall" and "extremely broad." Ritchson doesn't quite measure up to Reacher's 6′ 5″ stature, but at 6' 4", he's not far off. And the man who played ripply superhero Hawk in HBO's Titans series - which was recently renewed for a fourth season - can hardly be said to be lacking in the muscle department either.
The Series Never Strays Far From the Novels
And why should it? Lee Child has had to field a fair amount of criticism for the nakedly commercial tone of his novels over the years, but the fact remains that his books regularly hit the bestseller lists for a reason. The Jack Reacher book series is tightly plotted, well-paced stories with the right amount of twists and turns. They are seldom left open-ended and are tonally coherent, which is why the series has sold well over 40 million copies to date.
Where other TV series and films have meddled with the source material and done fatal damage to the original story's allure in the process -- fans of sci-fi comedy still wince at the 2005 remake of Douglas Adams' The Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy, and the least said about Tom Hooper's 2019 film version of Cats, the better -- Amazon's adaptation offers neat, economical, and surprisingly faithful versions of the novels. As Child has written more than twenty so far with the promise of more to come, it looks like it will be some time before Jack Reacher's well runs dry.
The Series Looks Amazing
As it turns out, some serious money was spent on the series, enough to enable the production team to build a massive set for the fictional city of Margrave from scratch near Ontario in Canada. But the high production values don't stop there. The care and attention shown by the production crew clearly shine through. From the meticulous color grading on the sequences detailing Reacher's flashbacks to his (not necessarily more innocent) childhood to the faultless blocking and editing, the production does full justice to Child's vivid descriptions and scenes.
Fans are bullish about the prospects for a new series. With the prospective return of a strong supporting cast of up-and-coming actors, including Malcolm Goodwin (House of Cards, Law & Order), Maria Sten (Channel Zero: The Dream Door, Swamp Thing), and Willa Fitzgerald (Gotham, Dare Me), as well as a number of well-established character actors such as Star Trek: Voyager and Quantum Leap alumnus Bruce McGill, the future looks bright for Jack Reacher - if not for the villains he so regularly despatches.