With season 2 confirmed, new series Reacher steps into a small-town throwdown that's all too familiar even if you haven't read the bestselling books.
A stranger comes to town. It's the oldest plot in the book, and it's also the oldest plot in Lee Child's best-selling series of Jack Reacher novels. A new Amazon Prime Video series adapts Killing Floor, the first novel to feature one-man army Jack Reacher, and it banishes memories of the Tom Cruise movies with a more faithful rendition. The problem is, Reacher's action might be too familiar.
Reacher streams on Prime Video now, with all eight episodes of season 1 available from Feb. 4. Season 2 was confirmed by Amazon just days after releasing the show, which stars Alan Ritchson, Malcolm Goodwin, Willa Fitzgerald, Bruce McGill and Kristin Kreuk.
A man with no luggage steps off a bus. There's nothing in his pocket but a passport and an obscure World War II medal. He has no Facebook, Instagram or even a driver's license. But he does have quite a few identifying features: fists the size of turkeys, biceps like bowling balls and an unblinking stare that can resolve a parking-lot domestic dispute without having to say a word.
This is Jack Reacher, a man/mountain/military veteran taking a wander across the country until trouble finds him. Strolling into the small town of Margrave, Georgia, he's enjoying a slice of pie when he's arrested by panicky police. The cuffs don't fit, however -- figuratively and literally -- as not only is he innocent but he's so big he can't be restrained.
Former Blood Drive star Ritchson plays the man himself, and his hulking version of Reacher is everything the Tom Cruise version wasn't. Cruise played the character in two movies in 2012 and 2016, but drew criticism from fans of the novels for being a fraction of the size of the muscled behemoth described by Child. This time round, Ritchson, who previously starred as superheroes Aquaman in Smallville and Hawk in Titans, looks like he could bench press Cruise and then eat him.
Reacher gets ample opportunity to flex brain and brawn as 250 pounds of bone-snapping, eye-gouging frontier justice wading through Margrave's bad guys. The series is a throwback to all-action small-town throwdowns of the past like Walking Tall (a 1973 flick that spawned various sequels and remakes, including a an early 2004 starring role for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson). Something is rotten in Margrave, and Reacher is soon ass-whupping his way up a hierarchy of southern-fried low-lifes from rednecks to convicts to hired muscle as he simultaneously unravels a deadly conspiracy.
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