Just like the books, the Reacher series is great entertainment for train journeys and medium-haul flights ★★★☆☆

Let’s start with some numbers. The thriller hero Jack Reacher, from the Reacher books by Lee Child, is a man’s wardrobe. He is 1.96 meters tall and weighs more than 113 kilos, largely taken up by muscle mass. And we know that because it’s mentioned in roughly every one of the twenty-five books in the ongoing series. Reacher is a loner, ex-serviceman, who arrives at the beginning of each adventure in a remote town – usually by bus, as a horse – only to encounter injustice. And then it helps that he’s quite a physical presence (rooms go quiet) and can take out the ledge’s scum in every way possible.

In two feature films (Jack Reacher from 2012 and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back from 2016) Jack Reacher was played by Tom Cruise, an actor who is 1.72 meters tall. Now Cruise is an excellent actor, but it is difficult to add that missing 25 centimeters. That was partly solved by only casting badguys from around 1.70 meters, but it was never completely convincing.

That’s why the first minutes of the new series reacher on Amazon Prime Video so strongly, also for the loyal readers of the books, of which the undersigned can be counted. From the first moment we see a giant of a guy get off a bus, you think: this is him! Actor Alan Ritchson is also 1.88 meters, to finish the list, but in combination with an extremely muscular physique, which heralds all kinds of disaster. reacherthe series, is based on Killing Floor (translated as hunting ground), the first Reacher novel from 1997, where the formula was immediately established.

The evil of the world has burrowed far from the great cities in an unsightly town. Reacher chases his nose and has to deal with victims for whom he stands up. Local law enforcement officers are corrupt brutes, except for one attractive woman. She sees him leave again at the end of the adventure, many, many deaths later, in a bus that drives off towards an endless horizon.

That series actually works just like the books. Great for train journeys or medium-haul flights, with a kind of under the hood humor and the talent for creating scenes that always keep the comfortable formula just on edge. Ritchson isn’t a great actor, but he’s fine at those dead-on analyzes with which he first confuses his opponents and then completely flattens them. In the opening episode it takes about seven minutes for him to say his first words, but he has a good deadly look and the right ‘who can make me what’ look. And this Reacher really dares to be extremely unpleasant, something Tom Cruise doesn’t have in his package either. But enough about Cruise: Ritchson is the new Reacher.