City of Margrave, Georgia. Some strange people in white overalls brutally kill a man outside the city at night. The next day, a huge man appears in the town, who arrived on an intercity bus and who does not have any luggage with him. His name is Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson), he is a retired military investigator who served in many hot spots.
Reacher likes to travel around America light, and he came to this town out of simple curiosity: he learned that it was in Margrave that he last performed and then died bluesman Blind Blake, whose songs Reacher really likes.
In Margrave, Jack went to a cafe for coffee and peach pie, the best in Georgia, but before he could swallow a bite, he was arrested on charges of murder the previous night.
Reacher’s innocence will be cleared up pretty quickly, but the investigation will become a very personal matter for him, and the story that Jack, police inspector Oscar Finlay (Malcolm Goodwin) and his assistant Roscoe Conklin (Willa Fitzgerald) will face is very complicated and carries great risks for anyone who tries to dig it up.
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Retired military investigator Jack Reacher is a character in a series of detective stories by British writer Lee Child (his real name is Jim Grant). The first book, Floor of Death, was published in 1997 and immediately gained great popularity, after which Lee Child began to release a book a year, and now there are already twenty-six of them. (Lee Child co-wrote the last novels with his younger brother.)
Despite the fact that the stories about Jack Reacher are almost ready-made scripts for films, they were not filmed for a long time. In 2012, there were rumors that a feature film based on one of the stories was being shot, but then fans of the series were taken aback by the announcement that Jack Reacher would be played by Tom Cruise.
And it’s not even that, according to the book, Reacher is a blue-eyed two-meter giant (Lee Child wrote this character from himself), and Cruz does not reach two meters for one thirty-centimeter tennis. It’s about character and charisma. Cruz is just a completely different type: a kind of eternal boy with his hair neatly disheveled by the best hairdressers and with his primitive acting tricks imposed on his teeth from the series of half-smile, move his head to the side, half-smile again, move his head again.
Therefore, those viewers who read the stories felt that nothing good would come of the film adaptation. Moreover, as a basis, they took not the first, most spectacular, story, but already the ninth.
Lee Child himself, when he heard that Tom Cruise would embody Reacher, only neighed in response, but the studio paid as much as $ 750 thousand for the film adaptation of the ninth story set the writer in a serious mood, because who would refuse to receive so much money?
The film “Jack Reacher” turned out to be very, very mediocre, the script there was very weak, from Cruise, as expected, no Reacher even came close, but he went well with those viewers who did not read the story, the CCU for the picture is quite decent 3.6 units , so the studio even launched a sequel, for which they bought the rights to the eighteenth story.
The sequel was called “Jack Reacher 2: Never Go Back”: it was an amazingly dreary and mediocre action movie on a disgusting script, even those who did not read the story did not like it, and the TCC showed a little more than 2 units, which meant that the film was barely barely pay off, and not immediately.
Both Cruz and the studio after that lost all interest in continuing the franchise, so Jack Reacher in the image of Cruise, thank God, really will never return to us – at least let’s hope so.
In the current 2022, a whole series dedicated to this character was released. The series is called simply Reacher, so as not to be confused with the film, but on IMDB it was called the same as the first film, Jack Reacher. And now the series – well, more precisely, its first season – is based precisely on the very first story “Death Floor” (Killing Floor). For the role of Jack Reacher, the actor Alan Ritchson was invited, who in terms of type and charisma is much more consistent with the character of the story, which is noted by almost everyone who has read this story.
What ended up happening with the series? It is presented in a rather interesting manner. The fact is that the action in the book takes place in the late nineties, that is, twenty-five years ago, and the world was completely different twenty-five years ago. But the creators of the series did not bother with an accurate recreation of the late nineties, so the characters seem to live in modern reality – cars, mobile phones, social networks – but there are no other signs of the present time: everything is staged in the style of an old-school action movie of the nineties.
And this, I will say, is very good, because it completely corresponds to the style of the story itself: a sleepy and dusty provincial town where everyone knows each other, the scoundrel rich Mr. Cleaner, on whom the whole city depends and who believes that he has no law piss, the nasty son of Cleaner KJ, the sneaky mayor Grover Teal and above all that Jack Reacher is a former military investigator who is not afraid of anyone or anything, he is very unemotional and completely unflappable, and if Jack thinks that someone is in something – he is guilty, he will not arrest this person and bring the case to court, he will simply kill him.
And when Jack, who has found out that this has all become a very personal matter for him, says that he will find the perpetrators of the murder and kill them all, you just somehow believe that he can do it.
Richson as Reacher is great. However, at first I was somewhat annoyed by the fact that the creators of the series, with or without reason, are trying to show Ritchson without a T-shirt. The actor has an excellent pumped-up figure, and, let’s say, a little poster-magazine pumped up, but why focus on this in the case of a former military investigator?
(I note, by the way, that Cruise was also shown several times in both films with a naked torso, but it’s written right in his contract how many times he should be shown in this form. However, many other actors have a similar clause, who specifically sought the appropriate forms.)
However, everything was redeemed by the fact that, according to the type of Ritchson, he is absolutely what you need! A powerful man with bright charisma, with a rather good-natured expression on his face, but Alan can, practically without changing this good-natured expression on his face, show a person so dangerous for someone who somehow caused his displeasure that it was just great!
And most clearly this feature of the actor manifested itself somewhere in the middle of the series in the scene where Reacher comes to a cafe to slightly offend KJ, the son of Cleaner. It was just a class, for this I was ready to forgive at least a dozen subsequent shows of Ritchson with a naked torso, especially since in fact the creators of the series quickly calmed down with this matter: well, in the first episodes we already found out what gorgeous muscles Ritchson-Reacher has , and then let’s focus on the plot, which is quite full of sharp turns.
The second interesting point is the way the fights are staged in the film. They are fleeting, cruel and quite realistic (from a cinematic point of view, of course). And the way it’s delivered is impressive. Ritchson in these scenes is effective and convincing.
Yes, the final chukalovo is such a pure “scene at the factory”, but this is quite according to the laws of the genre, and also fits well into the very correct old schoolness of the entire series.
The secondary characters are also very good. Malcolm Goodwin as Oscar Finlay was great. His character is a kind of metropolitan thing, a graduate of a prestigious educational institution, who ended up in this town to a certain extent by accident. He doesn’t fit in at all with the Margrave cops, he’s completely out of tune with the rest of the cops, no one likes him, but he doesn’t care.
Also, they initially have no mutual understanding with Reacher, and Oscar cooperates with Jack only because of the understanding of how much Reacher can help him in this investigation: they constantly dive with each other there, but then it turns into such friendly jokes and they are starting to respect each other.
Willa Fitzgerald has an even more interesting character: a seemingly frail policewoman who takes an immediate liking to Reacher, but it’s well shown that her Roscoe Conklin has a tough personality and can’t be intimidated. And she is very, very cool in her own way! And it is played very well, I really liked Willa in this role. And with Reacher, they did not have an ordinary affair: Reacher really began to respect her, while Roscoe well understood that Reacher would not stay with her for a long time.
I won’t dwell on the rest of the characters, but I’ll note that Bruce McGill quite effectively played the vile mayor, and the type was not at all primitive, and Christopher Webster was quite convincing in the role of that very son of KJ, and there one could believe that the guy was capable of what he did at all.
I really liked it. No, this is clearly not the best series of 2022, it is not an event in the serial world, but I have long dreamed of getting the story “The Floor of Death” in cinema – and I got it, and in the best possible way! Thank God that with Cruise they took on the ninth story, which no longer bothered me (I read to the sixth, and it was already clear that it would get worse and worse, as usual), and that the best story was filmed in the series ! And they filmed it exactly as it should be – in the appropriate style, choosing the right actor for the role of Jack Reacher!
For this, the creators of the series, the actors of the series and the Amazon service – thank you very much! Finally!
PS The results of the Amazon show seem to have inspired a second season order, which is already filming. Well, let’s see what happens.
PPS The series also has a cameo by Lee Child. Where he is much more fun than in cameos in two films with Corn. Of course, here we are dealing with the right Jack Reacher!
Jack Reacher / Reacher
Director: Nick Santora Cast: Alan Ritchson, Malcolm Goodwin, Willa Fitzgerald, Hugh Thompson, Christopher Webster, Bruce McGill, Max Jenkins, Gavin White, Leslie Frey, Jonathan Kensgen
Series, USA, 2022, 49 min. Detective thriller, 8 episodes in 1 season