Brooke Palmer/Amazon Studios
Legendary The New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael famously censured Dirty Harry for what she considered its fascistic vigilantism, and she’d undoubtedly have felt likewise about Reacher.
The protagonist of Prime Video’s hit adaptation of Lee Child’s novels is a hulking and murderous special-ops uber-detective hobo—think of him as a cross between Captain America, MacGyver, the Terminator, and Batman (as well as a one-man A-Team)—who proudly doles out lethal justice because he’s always the smartest, toughest, scariest, and noblest titan in the room. Judge, jury, and extreme-prejudice executioner, he’s a colossus with a self-administered license to kill and the virtue and smarts to justify it. That makes him a cruel and anti-democratic sort of do-gooder. Yet it also renders him a thrilling fantasy of might making right and of good triumphing over evil—a no-nonsense superhero who punishes the wicked with righteous fury.
Reacher is the platonic ideal of dadcore television, and it doesn’t stray from its chosen I-am-the-law template in its second season (Dec. 15). It does, however, improve upon it in every conceivable way. Based on Child’s Bad Luck and Trouble, the series’ latest go-round is a superior bruiser—fiercer, funnier, and with a better storyline, supporting characters, and villains. It’s an upgrade cast in an ’80s-’90s action cinema mold, and it solidifies headliner Alan Ritchson as both a perfect Reacher and the moment’s reigning He-Man. Standing six-foot-who-knows-what and 240-or-so pounds of gigantic pecs, enormous biceps, tree-trunk thighs, and washboard abs, he’s like an over-the-top cartoon come to life—all intense scowls, unwavering confidence, and bulging muscles. Rithcson’s intimidating presence (and ability to lace it with mordant humor) goes a long way toward establishing this series as one of the best things to happen to the beat-’em-up genre in decades.