TL;DR – I am not sure if the formula is starting to feel repetitive or if this season falls flat for me, but I didn’t connect with it at all.

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime subscription that viewed this series.

Reacher Review –

There are few people in the military fiction business with a bigger name than Lee Child. His novels, especially his Reacher series, are legendary in the space. So much so that having Tom Cruise be the face of the film adaptations was seen as a disappointment because he did not live up to the depiction in the novels. However, there was much rejoicing when the First and Second TV series came out because they captured the essence of what the book readers and the general public wanted, and that is a hard cross-section to nail. But now, after seeing the third season, I’m not as sure as I once was.   

So, to set the scene, poor Reacher (Alan Ritchson) always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This time, all he wanted to do was sell some old records to fund the next part of his journey, but when he looked out to the street, he saw a kidnapping happen right in front of him. Quickly dispatching the potential captors, he tries to get the potential hostage, Richard Beck (Johnny Berchtold), to safety, only to find one of the potential captors was a cop. Now a potential wanted felon, he takes a job with Richard’s father, Zachary (Anthony Michael Hall), while things blow over. However, all is not what it seems, and Reacher might be just where he wants to be. Now, from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

While I did walk away from this season feeling more frustrated than before, there were still many of the elements that worked before. The first is Alan Ritchson, who is clearly a presence on screen, and I don’t just mean about his stature, okay, not just his stature. Alan brings so much to the character, from the way he walks, those subtle mannerisms in his face, and the timber of his voice. To quote my father: “It is not what you said, but how you said it”. There are so many moments in this show that would have worked with a different actor, such as the laundromat scene. I also really liked the bond that developed between Reacher and Richard throughout the season. The action scenes are all solid, and yes, all the encounters with Paul “Paulie” van Hoven (Olivier Richters), which were at the forefront of all the marketing worked as well as you would want them to do.   

By all accounts, this looks like a faithful adaptation of the source material, but for me, I am not sure this novel worked when stretched out to a television series format. At times, it felt like I was watching a narrative equivalent of an accordion, with some parts feeling stretched out and others quite rushed. It also felt like we kept walking over the same territory, over and over again, both within this season and with the series as a whole. This gives us moments like you knew from the moment you meet John Cooper (Ronnie Rowe Jr.) that he is going to kill Steven Eliot (Daniel David Stewart). It could not have been foreshadowed more if they tried. We have characters like Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) who feel tacked on rather than part of the whole, and it just gets messy.       

Moreover, this season, more than any other, I found myself disconnecting from the character of Reacher and his motivations. Sure, wanting to kill the guy Francis Xavier Quinn (Brian Tee), who murdered one of your team awfully, I get that. Indeed, this was also the core of Season Two. However, there is a callousness that he shows to other characters, including those who have been shown as being innocent that felt at odds with who the character is. Now, if this were a series that was going to take the chance to turn him into a heel, that would have been an interesting creative choice. But here, it is almost glossed over or used as a footnote in the dialogue rather than any honest exploration. This is not helped by Reacher and Susan Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) having zero chemistry, even though the show insists that they do, which makes some of the actions of the DEA profoundly frustrating.

In the end, do we recommend Reacher: Season 3? Look, while I have been negative here, it is still quite watchable, and if you liked the previous seasons, then there will be stuff in her that you will like. However, I am not sure if it is just the way the production came together or issues with adaptation, but I left the series feeling more disappointed than I thought I would. Have you seen Reacher yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Reacher
Directed by – Sam Hill & Gary Fleder
Written by – Scott Sullivan, Penny Cox, Cait Duffy, Lillian Wang & Michael J. Gutierrez
Created by – Nick Santora
Based on – Persuader by Lee Child
Production/Distribution Companies – Amazon MGM Studios, Skydance Television, Paramount Television Studios, Blackjack Films & Amazon Prime
Starring – Alan Ritchson, Maria Sten, Sonya Cassidy, Johnny Berchtold, Roberto Montesinos, Olivier Richters, Brian Tee & Anthony Michael Hall with Daniel David Stewart, Mariah Robinson, Greg Bryk, Storm Steenson, Helen Taylor, Anousha Alamian, Aleks Paunovic, Mark Taylor, Brendan Fletcher, Drew Nelson, Ronnie Rowe Jr., Caitlin McNerney, Donald Sales, Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz, Milton Barnes, Mick Betancouort, Andreas Apergis, Robert Bazzocchi, Farhang Ghajar & Johnathan Sousa and Simon Northwood, Bryan Edwards, Nicky Guadagni, Khalid Karim, Ankit Kumar, Peter Deiwick, Emerson Wong, Stephanie Herrera, Stephen Bogaert, Michael Rhoades, Sean James Lee, Brandon Knox, Jim Annan, Victor Ertmanis, Owen Roth, Tal Zimerman, Chris Sandiford, Sam Warnock, Jay Wong, Aury Barnett, Joshua Obra, Sebastian Maclean, Christopher Omari, Brendan Carmody, Andrew Moodie, Eileen Li, Hayward Morse, Simon Sinn, Ann Sinn & James Eddy 
Episodes Covered – Persuader, Truckin’, Number 2 with a Bullet, Dominique, Smackdown, Smoke on the Water, L.A. Story & Unfinished Buisness