Prime’s “Reacher” is an easy, fun watch

I am a simple man. For every highbrow, complex movie or TV show I watch, I watch just as many (if not more) middle-of-the-road, not overly complicated ones. I don’t mean that description as an insult. You show me a movie with Jason Statham beating up dudes, and I will be there with bells on. These are my comfort movies. I know they aren’t going to be incredible (sometimes they are), but, odds are, I will have a good time. For the last few years, Amazon’s Prime Video has had a show that hits that sweet spot for me and has been endlessly enjoyable to watch: “Reacher.” The show is just about to wrap up it's fourth season and filming has already started on season five. This show is following the classic yearly release model that is sadly not so common these days. 

“Reacher” is based on Lee Child’s very successful book series. Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) is a former U.S. Army military police officer with no home or cell phone. He spends his time wandering the country's roads and ends up involved in one problem or another.

In 2012, Tom Cruise starred in “Jack Reacher.” It was a fun movie, but many fans of the Lee Child novels complained that Cruise wasn't the right guy to play the titular hero. Tom Cruise is too short (he’s 5 ft 7), has a medium build, and his version talked too much. In the books, Reacher is 6 ft 5 in and weighs between 210 and 250 pounds. Basically, the guy is built like a linebacker and is not known for being overly talkative. He is more of a man of action. Enter Alan Ritchson, the man born to play this role. The role of Reacher requires a lot of physicality, and Ritchson can deliver that. One of my favorite moments in this series is anytime some thugs show up to attack Reacher. At the beginning of the season, it's usually two guys, and you look at them and think, “You shoulda brought more guys.” Then Reacher easily disarms and dispatches them. Not many people can pull that off convincingly, but Ritchson is one of them. Last season, one of the henchmen was played by an actor named Olivier Richters, a man who is somehow bigger than Ritchson, and all season you knew these two would have to come to blows, and it was so much fun to see Reacher outmatched in size and strength. It showed that while he is big and can fight and shoot guns, Reacher is also very smart and calculating.

This show is a ton of fun to watch. The show usually starts with Reacher unintentionally getting involved in something. This season, he is on a subway in Philly and notices a woman exhibiting the signs of someone with a bomb. What he discovers involves the presidential frontrunner, a warlord, and a chemical formula. This season has been one of the best and has had one of the more compelling stories. It has great action, characters with hidden motives, FBI/CIA agents trying to keep the country's secrets, and people constantly underestimating Jack Reacher.

If you are reading this and thinking, “That sounds like a show I would watch, but this is its fourth season, and that’s a lot of TV to catch up on.” Here’s the thing: you don’t need to watch the other seasons first. Every season starts basically the same. Reacher wanders into town, unwittingly gets involved in a situation, the bad guys figure out who Reacher is, and we get a retelling of his history. The only connective tissue is Neagly (Maria Sten), a member of Reacher’s military investigation unit who shows up to help him. She is actually getting her own show, which premieres this week. But again, their history is rehashed whenever she shows up. It’s an easy show to pick a season and watch without feeling like you are missing out on some plot from previous seasons.

There is a term for a show like this: a dad show. Many times this is used as a pejorative. It is not something you want media to be. It is a show or movie that has a lot of action sequences and twisty storylines. They usually involve spies or crime, and these shows have become very popular in the past few years. I  see nothing wrong with shows/movies like these. Not everything has to be an awards contender. More than anything in the media I consume, I want to have fun. I have a whole Letterboxd list of great movies I never want to watch again because, while good, they were tough to watch. I tend to buy the movies I had fun watching, not just the good films. More often than not, I want my media to entertain me. If that happens to be a “dad show,” then so be it.

“Reacher” is on Prime Video