‘Reacher’ Season 4 review: Alan Ritchson continues to punch heads and influence people in an uneven outing

Season 4 of Reacher should have been an explosive ride. It is based on 2009’s Gone Tomorrow, the 13^th book in Lee Child’s bestselling series, and features a deadly female antagonist. This is one fight Reacher cannot win by brute force.

Unlike Season 3’s gigantic Paulie, Reacher’s adversary this time is a woman with a nasty penchant for and skill with knives. The itinerant ex-MP, as we know, is not a fan of knives.

The book unpacks the mystery as a series of chess moves, and the closer Reacher gets to the truth, the murkier it gets as old secrets and wars are uncovered, with corruption going into the highest echelons of power. In short, it is the perfect canvas for Reacher’s Rambo-Rimbaud selves to shine.

The show, like the book, starts with Reacher on a subway seeing a distressed woman who seems to check all the boxes of a suicide bomber. When Reacher tries to talk to her, she shoots herself. Unable to let it go and feeling somewhat responsible for the woman’s death, Reacher starts to investigate what prompted Anna Merrick (Karen Kwong-Chip), to take her life.

Reacher gathers his team, which includes Tamara (Sydelle Noel), a detective with the Philadelphia Police Department, Anna’s brother, Jacob (Christopher Marquette), who is a police officer and an independent journalist, Plum (Kevin Weisman). Plum was created for the show, according to the makers, for exposition and comic relief. There is a journalist Lila Hoth, (Agnez Mo), and her mother, Amisha (Anggun) who Anna was coming to meet.

Though the season started well, it lost steam after episode 3 with the following episodes turning into an endless round of information dumps sounding suspiciously like radio commentary (“he bled to death” at the sight of a bloody corpse), fights, and frenetic chases.

Reacher does not do any detecting or analysis and seems to stumble on the truth, or versions of it. The main villain is ineffective and seemingly indestructible, causing the loss of momentum and menace.

With all the hectic running about, little time is spent developing the camaraderie between the characters, one of the show’s strengths in previous seasons. Since we do not get a handle on relationships between Reacher and Tamara or between Jacob and Plum, the stakes are considerably lowered.

A still from ‘Reacher’ Season 4
| Photo Credit:
Prime Video

Changing things from the book is only to be expected considering Gone Tomorrow was written against the backdrop of 9/11, counter terrorism, and the wars in Afghanistan. Rudyard Kipling’s lines about the tribeswomen in his poem, ‘The Young British Soldier’, are appalling and lay the foundation for the graphic violence that follows.

The action has been shifted from New York to Philadelphia, some character names have been changed and the big reveal has been moved up, which also contributes to the flagging pace of the show. The geo-politics have been shifted from Soviet-era battles in Afghanistan to Indonesia.

Adaptations can change things around but should serve the narrative, which is where this adaptation falls woefully short. The final fight on the staircase goes a little way in providing some thrills though the killing in the lift was a bit too gruesome. Ritchson continues to move through the muddy plot like the five-star tank that he is. With Season 5 going to adapt Make Me (one of the most disturbing books of the series), one can only hope the makers do right by our favourite 250-pound knight errant.

Reacher is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video