About Reacher: Not Just a Reminder to Work Out
Post 1139:
When I read the first Jack Reacher book many years ago, I must admit that I was surprised. While it is a page turner you’d find sitting in and amongst the predictable slew of questionable titles at the airport rack, in many ways it is a cut above. I loved The Killing Floor and it turned me into an instant fan. The writing is purposeful, intense, and unpretentious. Most important, extremely fun.
Enter the Amazon series Reacher. Spoilers, but here’s the long and short. It’s purposeful, intense, and unpretentious. Yes, extremely fun.
No doubt, I had my doubts. Serious doubts. I mostly watch pretentious dusty stuff so that I can convince myself I’m superior to other people. Well, quickly I forgot about all that crap. Quick is the operative word here. Like the book, the series keeps up a fantastic pace. The characters don’t waste words or time, and the plot wears little to no fat.
Jack Reacher is a compelling character because he’s more or less simple. We don’t value simple all that much these days. People want to be complex and multilayered and multifaceted—it’s natural enough. Turns out though, sometimes being complicated is tedious and boring as balls. Every now and then it’s cool to hang out with someone like Jack Reacher, a guy who goes where he goes because he wants to and does what he wants because he feels like it. His transient lifestyle doesn’t make sense to the people in the story nor to me, but of course there is an old-timey romanticism to it. And I realize the drifter going from place to place righting wrongs isn’t a shiny new invention in storytelling. Who cares. Most new inventions don’t work that well, anyway.
Anyway, nothing here is really really groundbreaking.
It’s a standard mystery thriller, just better. As I said, the rhythm is key. Very snappy dialogue, tight characterizations, and well-organized plotting make Reacher go.
At first, the size of the actor bothered me. And not because I’m—let’s just say, not tall and hugely muscled—he’s just so freaking big. All these guys are messing with him in the show and I’m thinking, there’s no way anyone would have the stones. It would take an anti-tank gun to knock down this lug. Sorry, I should know the actor’s name, but I kind of like that I don’t.
The cool thing about Reacher is that it keeps the tough guy stuff in its back pocket, using it only when absolutely necessary. Mostly, he’s a clever detective wowing the audience and the surrounding characters with his unending powers of deduction. It’s a fun mix of Sherlock Holmes and one of those machines that crushes cars at the junkyard. Reacher seems to enjoy himself throughout, and even though there’s a few things I’d change, it would take effort or some kind of dumb agenda not to get wrapped up in the story.
Around the same time, the new season of Ozark was released. I really like that show. It might even be better than Reacher. Great acting, great direction, extremely intense. A very different kind of production, obviously. It got me to thinking, what’s the biggest difference?
It think it’s Honesty. Everyone in Ozark is lying all the time, even the people we root for. It’s all deception and self-deception, all very complicated. Reacher is rarely about deception and very rarely about self-deception. He’s a charge ahead straight forward hero who doesn’t always do the perfectly moral thing and apologizes for nothing. Sure, he’s got some internal struggles, but most of the time he’s too busy getting the girl or smashing some dude’s face or solving mysteries to worry about it. Reacher rules. Check it out. Have some freaking fun, gosh sakes. And maybe do some push-ups.
Cheers and see you after.
