“Yeah, I’m old. So I know a thing or two about a thing or two.”
Jack Reacher is a character found in a collection of novels by Lee Child, who is really British writer Jim Grant. We were introduced to Jack Reacher in the novel The Killing Floor. It would also provide the material for the first season of this Amazon streaming series. As the popularity of the books grew, it didn’t take long for the character to reach the box office, and while he didn’t resemble the literature character in any physical way, it was Tom Cruise who first brought him to life on the big screen. There have now been two feature films and 30 books released to carry on the exploits of Jack Reacher. Amazon and Paramount Studios have brought him to the smaller screen, and this time I think they did the character far better justice. The response has been quite positive, and now you can judge for yourself with release of Reacher: Season Three on Blu-ray. I had the opportunity to check out the Blu-ray, and it was a pretty good time, to be sure. Here’s what I found out.
Again, the first season of Reacher introduced us to the character and appropriately relied on the first published book to give us that introduction. The series pretty much reboots the character and shares no connection to the feature film universe of the character. Alan Ritchson takes on the portrayal of the character, and he’s a pretty solid choice. Of course, no one denies that Tom Cruise is a superstar, but he really never connected with the character in the Lee Child books. There was a fair amount of controversy over the choice, and Childs himself came out supporting the casting and the first film. But I don’t think fans of the books really warmed up to the idea, and the second film didn’t really do that well at the box office. I think all of that has changed here. Reacher himself is pretty much the only main character. You don’t have an overall ensemble here, but there was a supporting cast of actors/characters throughout the eight episodes of the first season. The second season finds Reacher in a completely different place and situation with an almost completely new ensemble cast to support him. This season was based on the book Bad Luck And Trouble, which jumps ahead to the 11th book in the series.
Now it’s the third season, and Reacher always appears to find trouble, and sometimes trouble finds Reacher. I guess you can say the third season begins with a little bit of both, and it gets off with a bang based on the 2003 novel Persuader, which is the seventh book in the series, so we do jump around a bit, and that means events and people that Reacher has already encountered aren’t going to be faithful to the novels, but the stories are pretty close, and Reacher fans of the book series have been more pleased with the television series than they were with the books.
So Reacher steps into trouble from the opening scene. He appears to be at a record store trying to sell some vinyl when a guy is being kidnapped right in front of the store. He steps into action and rescues the potential victim, killing a local cop accidentally along the way. He needs to get somewhere safe quickly, and the grateful Richard Beck (Berchtold) tells him that his father has a secure compound, and this was not the first time someone has tried to grab him to get at his father Zachary Beck, played by Anthony Michael Hall. If you know the character and have been paying attention, you pretty much know what’s going on here, and it’s honestly no spoiler to tell you that this kidnap was all staged so that Reacher can gain the elder Beck’s trust while taking the kid’s security team out at the same time. Beck should be grateful, and he’s going to need a new bodyguard for his son. That gets Reacher inside and now on a new mission. Beck owns a carpet company that’s a front for a smuggling operation. The Feds don’t know what he’s smuggling or for whom, but that’s Reacher’s season three mission.
It starts when Reacher thinks he recognized a ghost. Years ago he thought he killed a guy named Quinn, played by Brian Tee. it’s not like him to make assumptions, but when you shoot a guy in the head and then he falls off a steep cliff, it’s reasonable to assume you’ve taken him off the board. To us it’s a very Holmes-like character death complete with a high waterfall, so you have to know this guy is coming back to haunt him. When he calls his old unit, including long-time teammate Francess Neagley, played by Maria Sten, to get some info on his old foe, it sends a red flag to the feds who approach him. Federal Agent Susan Duffy, played by Sonya Cassidy, is a federal agent on thin ice because of her ruthless pursuit of a missing partner she believes Beck and his organization have captured and maybe killed. It’s back to leave no man … or woman … behind. So she talks Reacher into helping her, which leads to the fake kidnap attempt. That also means keeping the kid’s bodyguard under the radar while the investigation proceeds. If he escapes, he’ll blow Reacher’s cover. So it’s up to Duffy’s small team of green agent Steven Elliott (Stewart) and her long-time partner Guillermo Villaneuva, played by Roberto Montesinos. He’s also the guy who played the “cop” that Reacher was supposed to have killed. Unfortunately, they usually leave the bodyguard alone with the rookie Elliott, and it’s not a matter of if but a matter of when he gets loose and poses a problem.
One of the crazy plot points here is that Quinn lost his memory when he was shot and fell off the cliff, so Reacher is able to actually meet with the big boss without blowing his cover. But this dude is a ruthless killer, and the only reason that Duffy’s undercover informant is still alive is because she’s got red hair and is pretty, and the guy the gang is doing business with likes the type. So she’s being kept alive as a deal sweetener. There’s a lot of pushing believability here, but just roll with it.
The season uses the usual cat-and-mouse format, and you never know which of the good guys is going to get killed, because in Reacher pretty much nobody is going to be safe. One team member you know is going to be safe is Maria Sten’s Neagley, because she’s getting her own spinoff series here, coming soon. Here you get all eight episodes on two discs.
Anthony Michael Hall does a great job as the smaller bad guy, and my biggest disappointment of the season is that he was underused. There was a time when Hall was quite busy, and I still find his television work on The Dead Zone beats the heck out of the movie. He’s never as busy as he should be, and I was hoping for more out of the role here. The big bad guy wasn’t near as compelling, and Hall had great good guy/bad guy chemistry with Alan Ritchson, who puts in another superb performance this season. I thought the support team was also weak this season. Duffy is just not a compelling ally, and that team didn’t add much to the season. Sten’s appearance later in the season brings the entire game up big-time. I’m looking forward to seeing what she does on her own series, but I can’t help wishing she was going to do more with Reacher and Ritchson. They work well together. Reacher will be back again for a fourth and fifth season so he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I’m a fan, and I’ll the movie with Tom Cruise works for me, “Only in a pinch.”
