2/27/2024 0 Comments Jack reacher killing floor movie![]() ![]() “Everyone calls me Reacher,” he insists, doggedly, at the start of the inaugural season of the new television series, Reacher, streaming on Prime Video from February 4th in its eight-episode entirety. Now we have Alan Ritchson, “Reacher” plain and simple. He wasn’t crazy about the prominence of the flag, either. I was present when a new cover image for Never Go Back came through over text: “I said no guns on the cover,” Lee said, tossing his phone aside in disgust. Then came the Hollywood years, with tie-in editions between 20 proclaiming, against all plausibility, “Tom Cruise IS Jack Reacher”. Not only did they splash Reacher’s face all over Without Fail: they dressed him in one of big brother Joe’s Treasury suits, with white shirt and tie and Men-in-Black shades. Putnam Sons, in an act of petty revenge when Child was in the process of switching over to Bantam. It was first broken by his first publisher, New York’s G.P. Reacher aims a good deal lower than that, delivers in frequently thrilling ways, and sends the hero lumbering into the sunset, John Wayne-like, ready to do battle with all comers.For years there was an unwritten rule that Reacher’s face should never be shown on the cover of a Lee Child book. Look, if you want a smart, understated cranial classic, stream Power of the Dog. The actress is best remembered from the 2017 miniseries Little Women, and, indeed, Roscoe is to a large extent Reacher’s little woman here - earning his respect only when she fires off a perfect head shot to one of the dozens of bad guys who bite the dust during Reacher’s reign of righteous terror. Reacher is awash in testosterone, and we would drown in the stuff if not for the hero’s perky blonde sidekick, an officer named Roscoe, played by Willa Fitzgerald. Except, no Theseus is going to kill him Reacher is even more destruction-proof than a Marvel superhero. Reacher is something of a modern day Minotaur - half-bull, half-man, prowling a labyrinth of peril, reflexively doing battle with whatever challenger awaits around the next dark corner. I guess I think too much, and Reacher is not about thinking it’s about visceral, bare-knuckled, acid-in-the-face brawling. ![]() On the other hand, since the only reason Reacher stays in town is to avenge his brother’s death, you would think at some point someone would resolve the issue. It never happens, and I suspect both Child and the creators of this series were confident the ensuing tumult of bloody and violent diversions would push that puzzlement from the viewer’s mind. And, indeed, for the next seven episodes I kept waiting for someone to explain the mind-boggling randomness of that co-occurrence. “Doesn’t that seem like a pretty big coincidence - you just happen to walk into town the same day your brother is murdered?” one character asks early on. Reacher is at first a reluctant participant, but then the murder victim is identified: Shockingly - and improbably - it’s his own beloved brother, Joe, a Treasury Department investigator. His innocence is soon established, but the local chief of detectives (Malcolm Goodwin, channeling a young Denzel Washington) employs some shady legal technicalities in order to press Reacher into helping him crack the case. And while the script presents Reacher as a man of few words, Ritchson manages to deliver each spare line with an unspoken postscript: “By the way, if I wanted to I could tear your heart out right now.”īased on the first Reacher novel, 1997’s Killing Floor, this eight-part series finds Reacher, an ex-military drifter, randomly wandering into a small town - where he is promptly accused of murder, largely because he happened to be seen walking along a road near where the body was found. He has perfected the stilted yet imposing walk of a man with a lifetime of beefing up and brawling behind him. Six-foot-two, square-jawed Alan Ritchson - who’s made a career playing comic book heroes like Aquaman, Hawk, and Raphael, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle - is physically imposing in the role (although he could use a few more years and scars on him). I haven’t read the books, but I’ve got a feeling this new Prime Video series gets a lot closer to primal Reacher. Tom Cruise made two movies and a lot of money playing author Lee Child’s hardcore hero Jack Reacher - but fans of the books had a tough time accepting five-foot-seven Cruise as a guy described in the novels as six-foot-five with a face that “looked like it had been chipped out of rock by a sculptor who had ability but not much time.” Stars: Alan Ritchson, Malcolm Goodwin, Willa Fitzgerald
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