It is a fundamental law of the universe that mass determines the strength of gravity. The bigger something is, the more powerful its pull. This is also a fundamental law of Reacher, Amazon’s hit show now wrapping up its fourth season. Jack Reacher is a giant by size and by reputation. He pulls all sorts of things into his orbit; innocent victims who need help, shadowy government agents out to kill, the occasional love interest. However, this season feels like the first time Reacher pulls dead weight.
If you’ve seen the show, you know the formula. Reacher is minding his business somewhere, in this case it’s the Philadelphia subway. He sees someone being a little sus, a panicked woman with a gun in her bag who self-terminates when he asks if she needs help. He learns her name is Anna Merrick, and now he’s invested in her story. Two episodes later he confronts a presidential candidate about alleged Delta Force war crimes after bludgeoning assassins to death in a bowling alley. Just normal Reacher stuff, so far so good.
And to be clear, Reacher is still one of the best shows on television. Alan Ritchson’s portrayal is immensely watchable. Massive, muscular, and possessed with an omnipotent, invulnerable confidence, Iit’s like he knows he’s a main character on TV. There are so many frames where he is shot from the chest up, muscling from shoulder-to-shoulder across the screen while possessed with the serenity of a Buddhist monk. He stares right through the fourth wall and it’s as if you and he both know that he’s got it covered. Whatever ridiculous thing is about to occur won’t be an issue. Why? Because it’s on TV! Just keep watching.
And watch we do. Reacher often tops the streaming charts when airing new episodes. This season continued the trend because it largely stuck to what works. Reacher’s got a strong supporting cast once again. During his interrogation after the incident he befriends Tamara, a no-nonsense Philly cop stuck pushing pencils because of her unbending moral code. Credit to actress Sydelle Noel for bringing a grounded and nuanced performance to a role that could’ve been easy to understate. If you loved his dynamic with Neagley in Season 3 there’s more of the same here. Platonic, and with a mutual respect that keeps someone in Reacher’s corner.
There’s also Jacob, Anna’s brother and a small-town cop looking for answers and the whereabouts of his nephew (spoiler: it doesn’t end well). He fills the tagalong role well. Rounding out the crew is Russell, a former Washington Post reporter who got too close to the truth and now runs his own online blog. Alias fans will recognize Kevin Weissman, and he resumes a similar role here as “affable support guy with tech skills.”Like previous seasons, this strong ensemble cast helps carry the load onscreen when Reacher isn’t on it. Unlike previous seasons, the villains fall flat. Reacher is up against a pair of female assassins, Lila (Agnez Mo) and Amisha (Anggun) who operate as part of an Indonesia-based terrorist group. They’re out to concoct a chemical superweapon. Turns out Anna was blackmailed into stealing the formula for them, but no one knows where she hid the flash drive. It’s a suitable MacGuffin, but the narrative strain comes from Reacher’s tangled relationship with Lila and the overall stakes at play.
Reacher is at the wrong end of the gun again.
Prime Video
Lila initially contacts Reacher under the guise of being presidential candidate John Sampson’s long lost daughter. She, along with her “mother” Amisha, claim the flash drive proves his paternity and they need to confront him because Lila has a life-threatening disease that requires a bone marrow transplant. She’s also really hot, so of course she and Reacher bang each other. In reality, they’re after Sampson because he was part of a Delta Force team that trained, then killed, Amisha’s mentor General Putra. Sampson’s goons want the drive, presumably to protect his political career, and start chasing Reacher and crew all over Philadelphia.
The wheels start coming off the further into this tangled story we get. In addition to Sampson’s goons, there’s corporate goons, Lila’s terrorist goons, CIA goons, and Philly cops in the mix. It doesn’t coalesce well and, frankly, we can’t be bothered to track the faction allegiance for every salt-and-pepper stuntman Reacher puts through a brick wall. There’s a fine line between something that is stupid fun and something that is just plain stupid, and Reacher drifts into the latter by season’s end. The witty banter and fast-paced thriller plots of previous seasons are diminished in favor of superfluous car chases, redundant cliffhangers with narrow escapes, and brawls with goons we lose track of.
Lila and Amisha don’t work well as a foil for Reacher, either. Last season had the most intriguing villain by far, Paulie, played by “Dutch Giant” Olivier Richters. Someone bigger than Reacher? Amazing! We swap size for speed this time around, but their knife-twirling acrobatics don’t mesh with Reacher’s hulking and heavy fight style. Reacher is crushing stones and snapping bones left and right, but suddenly we need to believe he’s staggered by a jab from someone ⅓ his size?
Their evil plot comes off the rails, too. Sampson reveals himself to not only be an innocent victim but a hero in his own right. Suddenly the murky waters of international espionage clear up and we’re dealing with terrorists who want to stage an attack of their new chemical weapon in order to advertise it to black market buyers. Reacher has only dealt with hypothetical threats before, so watching him take his ragtag squad to stop an active terror plot without calling for backup seems like a reach (pun intended). Normally when Reacher is in a tight spot it’s because the circumstances put him there. Here, he actively inserts himself into something and contradicts the nature of his character. We like Reacher because trouble always finds him, not the other way around.
Fortunately, Reacher’s foray into Jack Ryan territory appears to be short-lived. The upcoming fifth season, release date still TBD, is based on the novel Make Me which has him in a rural Oklahoma town investigating a local conspiracy. Good. We want Reacher to be the biggest thing onscreen, not the plot holes.
