What if there was a man who was substantially larger than other men? This is the big question posed to us by the philosophers behind Amazon Prime’s original series Reacher. Based on the (many) Jack Reacher books by the crime author Lee Child, the show (which just wrapped its third season) follows the adventures of a mountain of man-flesh who uses his beefy body, brawny mind and slab of moral fortitude to kick and punch other men, and solve military crimes.
It’s hard to explain exactly what the plot of Reacher is: in the ancient tradition of shows like JAG (what if lawyers could fly jets?), it follows a retired US army military cop (what if a soldier could also solve crimes?) who wanders America with only a toothbrush. However, as he says, “wherever I go, trouble seems to find me” – usually in the form of organised crime needing to be less organised, or old grudges resurfacing, or the murder of an old pal, all of which means he has to reluctantly come out of retirement to stoically punch and kick yet again.
Our titular hero starts off as a recognisable trope in the action genre – a figure of terrifying efficiency who is capable of brutal violence; a John Wick or even Jason Bourne-style action man. But there is an important point of difference: roughly four feet of extra height. Famously (per Child’s books) 6ft 5in and 250 lb (113kg), Jack Reacher (played here by Alan Ritchson, still terrifyingly large at a mere 6ft 2in) is both tall and wide, qualities that may seem superficial but are in fact the heart and soul of the series.
Many of the action scenes resemble behind-the-scenes footage of Lord of the Rings, where you see the tiny child actors brought in to create a forced-perspective illusion that Ian McKellen was running around Middle-earth with a bunch of Hobbits – except in Reacher it’s just regular men, forced to stand near Alan Ritchson. Our hero’s impressive musculature is also the main point of conversation for the other characters. In the rare moments where, say, a beautiful yet foul-mouthed Boston FBI agent stops monologuing pertinent exposition points, we may be treated to such lighthearted comments as: “Last time I saw a guy twice your size was on Mount Rushmore.”
It’s an utterly ridiculous premise, but it’s just some of the most enjoyably addictive action on TV right now. For fans of Child’s books, it’s also a kind of cosmic rebalancing to the existence of the 2012 film Jack Reacher, where the titular hero was played by the famously short king Tom Cruise.
By contrast, Reacher’s beautiful obsession with its protagonist’s girthiness shows that it’s a series that understands exactly what it’s doing: entertaining us with a massive chunk of hero who will get out of most situations by punching with his head. It’s not even just violence – there’s a labours-of-Hercules logic to the show, exemplified in a season three episode where he is forced to take off all his clothes (the nudity of Jack Reacher is a recurring plot point) and swim across a punishing stretch of icy storm-tossed water to sustain a kind of Mrs Doubtfire-style farce of being seen in two places at once. He swims as if he is punching the very ocean itself into submission.
Reacher feels like a thought experiment, where we’re treated to a group fantasy about just how big a man can be, and what kind of things a man that huge would do. The writers then decided that a man that large would be a kind of weird American folk legend, a libertarian wet dream who travels the country on greyhound buses, experiencing liberty so hard that he has shed all his belongings, all methods of communication, all family and friends. A hyper-violent Quentin Tarantino retelling of the Johnny Appleseed myth.
There’s also a fascinating commentary on masculinity, harking back to the wild west type of no-nonsense, no-frills, emotionally repressed archetype who takes the law into his own hands. Sometimes, he’s a Ron Swanson-style figure of noble independence, at other times a cranky old man disgusted at the existence of lavender-flavoured ice-cream. And while his motives are always based in his own brand of ethics, I cannot stress just how much murdering this man does. Sure, they’re bad guys, but even they have rights. Just not to Jack Reacher, who is too big for the law.
With season three in the rearview and a fourth slated for 2026, you may think there is a danger of diminishing returns for Reacher – after all, how much story can you really milk out of the existence of a very big guy? But there’s a wisdom in Reacher’s simplicity, and this season our huge hero faces his most terrifying foe yet: a man even bigger than himself. A perfect escalation, for a perfect TV show.
Reacher Season 3 is streaming on Prime Video.
