Reacher returns for its fourth season (on Amazon Prime Video), bringing back the perfectly cast Alan Ritchson to play Lee Child’s iconic itinerant justice-dispenser.
For those who may not have encountered Jack Reacher in the books and three earlier seasons, he is a former military man, who quit the army and lives off the grid. He has no home, travels by bus or train, eats whatever is available, sleeps anywhere there’s space, and has in the name of belongings, just the clothes on his back and a toothbrush. When the clothes get too dirty, he buys a new set and chucks the old. He is huge and muscular (which is why Tom Cruise failed to impress in the movie made on Reacher), and has hands definitely bigger and heavier than Sunny Deol’s dhai kilo fists.
Apart from his nomadic mindset Reacher has another quirk—he doesn’t mind his own business if he can help it, and is always ready for a fight. (Trust No One, Fight Everyone as the promo declares).
Showrunner Nick Santora and director Sam Hill have picked Lee Child’s 2009 thriller, Gone Tomorrow and changed it quite a bit while keeping the core intact. The action is relocated from the book’s New York setting to Philadelphia and Washington D.C., character names are altered, a key player added, and the main backstory changed from Afghanistan to Indonesia—possibly to avoid the usual Islamic terror trope. The setup remains typical Reacher: a sudden encounter in the subway with a desperate woman, in the first episode plunges the taciturn hero into an escalating web of deceit.
The suicide of the woman, whose real identity is not what her ID shows, starts as an ordinary homicide investigation for the cops, but as Reacher frowns fiercely and bashes a few dozen baddies, it turns into a massive conspiracy involving rogue military factions, shady government agencies, foreign mercenaries, high-level political corruption and war crimes.
Reacher is usually a lone wolf, but to make the series more interesting, he acquires a team on the way—the dead woman’s brother, Jake Merrick (Christopher Rodriguez Marquette), a cop, with Reacher’s level of obstinacy if not his propensity for violence; Tamara Green (Sydelle Noel), a cynical Black detective fed up of being undermined; Russell Plum (Kevin Weisman), a freelance journalist with several axes to grind against the establishment.
The men who keep coming at Reacher are after a thumb drive they believe the woman on the train gave to him; as he tries to figure out what’s going on, he encounters the mysterious Lila Hoth (Agnez Mo), with a twisty story that involves a popular politician John Sampson (Marc Blucas).
The action is fast and brutal, as Reacher stands like a brick wall against armed men; he also has the mental clarity to preempt the moves made by his pursuers, and stay a step ahead.
As always, the series is wildly entertaining with a garnish of humour. A binge watch is not possible, unfortunately– three episodes dropped together, and one will drop each Wednesday till the eight episodes wrap up in September. The franchise has already received an extension, so Reacher is not going away anytime soon. Also, a protegee and pal of his, Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) gets a spin-off series of her own, in which Reacher will undoubtedly appear.
Reacher Season 4
Directed by Sam Hill
Cast: Alan Ritchson, Sydelle Noel, Christopher Rodriguez-Marquette, Agnes Ho and others
On Amazon Prime Video