#88. 'Reacher' (Prime Video)
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This short bonus episode is devoted entirely to the new Amazon Prime Video series Reacher, starring Alan Ritchson, with no real opening banter — Vic dives straight in, dubbing the show "Poirot with muscles" and admitting he's only made it "almost two" episodes in, grading the action an A+++ and the sex/nudity a "plus plus" (citing the police chief's full-frontal scene). Sonny, greatly enjoying the show, loves the visceral, R-rated violence — he calls watching Ritchson's enormous frame "ruin" bad people deeply, lizard-brain satisfying — but hates the "annoying profiler shit," the Sherlock-style deduction voiceovers, and the flashback-to-childhood structural device; he also breaks the news that Ritchson is from Niceville, FL, the same town/school as his Across the Movie Aisle co-host Peter Suderman. JVL, who has read all the Lee Child novels and seen both Tom Cruise Jack Reacher films (one great, directed by Christopher McQuarrie; one bad, by Ed Zwick), thinks Ritchson nails the size but not the intellect, arguing Cruise "sells" Reacher's smarts while Ritchson just "bowls his way through" dialogue; he praises Child's gift for writing kinetic violence set-pieces (what he and his wife call Reacher "getting the spooky") and Child's strong sense of place. The trio debate whether TV is more forgiving than film of a lead actor's weaker moments, compare Ritchson to actor David Keith, and note strong supporting turns from Guillermo (of What We Do in the Shadows) and an Andre Braugher-esque Boston detective. JVL closes with an unrelated tangent about a four-hour child-sexual-abuse-prevention training for his coaching gig, ruined for him by a projector stuck in the wrong aspect ratio for 45 minutes straight.
From the show notes
The guys consider the various versions of one Jack Reacher on this special bonus episode.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe. Tell your friends. It has been a mystery week really because last week we discussed Death on the Nile and today we're talking about Reacher on Amazon. Another murder mystery of sorts who, as I mentioned, reminds me he's like Poirot with muscles because he observes everything. Details matter, where the moon is and little fibers and twitches and people's reactions. He's very observant. This is on Amazon. I noticed it was trending when it came out and it was like Tom Cruise and I don't know what the deal is. All I have to say is, you know, this Reacher, the thing that bothers me is he's too tall. He should be like Tom Cruise. I mean, that's the real Jack Reacher. Okay, JVL, thought. You wanted to, who, you like, yeah, you said it first. I was curious, thoughts on it.
Sonny00:01:19How many episodes have you guys watched, JVL, how many have you watched?
Vic00:01:22Almost four. Okay, almost two.
Sonny00:01:24How many?
Vic00:01:24Almost two. Almost two. Almost two, I had like 14 minutes left.
JVL00:01:27If you've seen two, you've seen enough.
Vic00:01:29Okay, but I really like this. Go ahead.
JVL00:01:31Did you get to Bruce McGill?
Vic00:01:33Oh, yes, yes. No, I'm sure he's a good guy in this, by the way. Speaking of National Lampoon. Yeah, speaking of National Lampoon, D-Day. Any movie or show is going to be made better with the addition of Bruce McGill. JVL, your thoughts, because you're a Reacher guy, you read the Lee Child, right?
JVL00:01:49I've read all of the, all of the Reacher books. I have seen both of the Tom Cruise books. Tom Cruise, Reacher movies, one of which is exceptionally good. One of which is exceptionally bad. Uh, and this is kind of interesting. It's, uh.
Vic00:02:07Obviously, it addresses the question about the appearance of Reacher, right?
JVL00:02:11Yeah, it gets, but here's the thing, right? So it gets the appearance of Reacher right by casting Alan Richson, Richson, Richson out of nowhere, uh, who's a, he's in very good shape. To do a lot of low weight, high reps, skinless chicken. Uh, and they are playing, they are playing a lot of games with his height though. I don't know if you guys noticed this, but there are scenes where it is clear somebody's standing on a box.
Sonny00:02:41Okay.
JVL00:02:41To, to get him, I would say the relationship between his head level with his co-stars changes by the scene.
Vic00:02:49Well, I went to IMDB. He's actually six, two.
JVL00:02:53Yeah.
Vic00:02:53So here it's. It's like green mile.
JVL00:02:56Yeah. Would they, yeah. And they're playing games to make him part of me honestly wondered if they're doing the full on Peter Jackson foreshortening where they've got him standing right next to the camera and then Willa Fitzgerald is standing 15 feet away, you know, down. But it looks like, yeah, yeah, it looks like to make it.
Sonny00:03:12Well, if you shoot it in the right, if you shoot it in the right depth of field, you know, they'll be on the same plane.
JVL00:03:16Yeah. Uh, I don't know. It's, it's fine. I, I like it fine.
Sonny00:03:21I don't like it nearly as much as the first, the first Tom Cruise.
JVL00:03:25Version of it, which is maybe the high cinema kind of high sound. Like it's great. Yeah. It's really dark.
Sonny00:03:31It's got Werner Herzog. It's it was written and directed by Chris, Chris McQuarrie. Yeah. Oh yeah. Um, yeah, yeah. Who is, who is very, very good and who has done the last two or three mission impossible. Yeah. Um, but also like rewrote edge of tomorrow and like has been essentially Tom Cruise.
Vic00:03:47Falkery since Falkery, you got more Werner Herzog in, in that reach your movie that you did in Boba Fett.
Sonny00:03:55Mandalorian Mandalorian Mandalorian Mandalorian. Yeah.
JVL00:03:58Um, but so, but here's, so, okay. Well, I mean, let's just get to the physical stuff because that is what everyone, when people, when Tom cruise decided to take, I was going to say cast in the role, but just decided to take the role of reacher, uh, people got very upset. Oh, he's five foot one, you know, and it's true. And so the version of reacher that cruise represented on screen really only tangentially resembles. The reacher of the book. Uh, but what cruise gets is the intellect, right? I mean, he, I would say the intellect of the, the Tom cruise reacher maps pretty well to the reacher of the, of the books. Alan Richardson sounds to me a lot like a guy who is just bowling his way through pages of dialogue. He's really, I am not sure that he is selling to me.
Vic00:04:54It worked for me.
Sonny00:04:55I have some questions. Can I, I, so this is my big complaint with the show, which I actually am greatly enjoying and I'll, I'll, I'll discuss why I'm greatly enjoying it in a second, but my, my big problem with this, and this is what I wrote in my notes. This is literally what I have in my notebook in front of me. Annoying profiler shit. I, I, I hate, I hate the, the, the whole like, oh, I could tell that you were going to be in this place or he was. He was clearly killed with this sort of bullet and, but, or it was, and he likes to point it out. It was a tall man who had a college degree from Oxford, who could not possibly like, I hate, I hate that style of thing. And, and it's been, it's been done since the X-Files and millennium and, uh, like through, through, and it did the, the best version of this actually is the Tom Cruise version of Jack Reacher, because as you say, JBL, he is like, you can for, for all of Tom Cruise's defects. In this role. And I like, I'm not a reader of the book, so I don't actually care about any of the physical stuff on, on one level. We'll get to the other level in a second, but like, he's really good at selling that sort of thing.
JVL00:06:06He plays smart very well.
Sonny00:06:08Alan Richson, who has, he brings a lot of different skills to this role. He is not, he does not play smart. He doesn't, he does not play smart. I, maybe he's a very smart guy. I have worked for me. Who knows? But like he. But he just like reads off these, like, it's like, if I do it fast enough, people will think I'm really thinking it for myself. I'm telling you, man, I was like, I could, I could, the moon would have been 26 degrees to the left. And so he must've been kneeling in this bush and that's where the shot came from. And I, and I'm just like, ah, I don't like any of this. I don't like any of this. Now here's what I do like about Alan Richson. He has built like a brick shit house. And when I believe it, I believe it when he puts a stomp in a guy's eye and rips it out.
Vic00:06:54A plus, A plus, plus, plus action violence, man. I love to see that.
Sonny00:06:59The action violence is off the, I like.
Vic00:07:01There was one scene, by the way, in the, in the bathroom, Jen pop scene. And I had to replay it because it was like so much was going on. And there's one where it looks like he's, there's like.
Sonny00:07:11This is why he only got through part of episode two. Cause he finished.
Vic00:07:15Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Sonny00:07:16He was done. Yeah. He was done after watching that. That was it.
Vic00:07:19I was wiped out. I was wiped out, but he was, but there was like a scene and it was like a brief glimpse of some limb on the ground that he had stepped on. And I'm not even sure if it was an arm or a leg. And I was like, what just happened? But it was good.
Sonny00:07:32There was something deeply, deeply, very like lizard brain pleasing about watching this enormous man. Yeah.
Vic00:07:40Oh, ruin. I enjoy it.
Sonny00:07:42Ruin the physical presences of bad people. Like there's something, there's just something very pleasing about watching violence being done to the bodies of people who deserve it. Yeah. It's very fulfilling. And I like, that is what. That is what this show gets on a, on a very fundamental level.
JVL00:07:58This is Lee Child's great gift. And the books are just riddled with these scenes that Shannon and I refer to each other as when, when Reacher gets the spooky, right? You know, Oh, it's great. It's good. Reacher's going to go get the spooky. And my favorite of these.
Sonny00:08:15I don't understand.
Vic00:08:16What does that mean? What are you talking about?
JVL00:08:18We have to bleep that. Where's the spooky?
Vic00:08:19I'm not sure. What's going on here?
JVL00:08:20Like, like a dog going out to, to, you know, there's something, something in the yard making noise. The dog's like, so, uh, and so it kills me that the best of all of these scenes is bastardized in the very bad second Tom Cruise Reacher movie. And the best of all the scenes in all the books is a scene on airplane in which there are four bad guys and it's a commercial flight and Reacher just sort of walks up and down the plane and the course and absolutely dismantles these guys in the middle of the flight. And it is both amazing. Uh, and fun to read, but also hysterically funny as he like, you know, the, the, the image of this six foot seven guy folding himself up into an aisle seat next to some, some hoodlum who doesn't have his gun because he had to check the gun to get on the plane and reach her like first breaking one finger and then breaking the next finger. Anyway, and Lee child is great at writing these scenes like they jump off the page and this is one of his two great gifts as a writer. The other riches his sense of place. Um, like he, he is exceptionally good at most of the books take place within a very, very small geographical area. And you know, by, by a quarter of the way through the book, you understand every single block in the small town and understanding when Reaper, when Richard goes left on Maple Avenue, you know where he's heading to and, uh, but yes, so the, this is the joy of the books is the exactly the same as the joy of seeing this large man beating up people who deserves it. Yeah, that's great.
Sonny00:09:56Uh, it really is. I like, I am, I, this is, so this is, I always used to laugh at the people who were like, Oh, I can't believe Tom Cruise would do this. He's ruining my vision of Reacher. And I would always be like, Oh, I'll go fuck yourself. You know, you've got the biggest movie star in the world starring in your series of books. Like you should just be happy that they're getting made and they're getting made at least the first one competently. Um, uh, the second one was directed by Ed Zwick, by the way, I feel like we have not, I feel like, uh, I feel like we have not solved the mystery of what happened to Ed Zwick. Um, other than just like he, the sort of movie he makes like movies like glory or blood diamond or whatever, like those movies don't get made anymore. Um, and you know what?
Vic00:10:40He did, he did another one. Remember the other Tom Cruise movie Ed Zwick did, uh, the last samurai.
Sonny00:10:47Exactly. No, but that sort of movie, that sort of movie, the, like, the, like mid, the mid to high budget, like kind of like issue.
JVL00:10:54movie and like the last samurai. I'm sorry. Ken Watanabe is so good at that.
Sonny00:10:58Yeah, I, I liked that movie.
Vic00:10:59He made, there's some great, there's some great action scenes at that movie.
Sonny00:11:03He, he also made, he also made the, the, the Holocaust movie with Daniel Craig, the resistance, I think it was called.
JVL00:11:09Oh, he's in the, in the woods.
Sonny00:11:12Yeah, that was, and that was a good movie too. Like it, like it, I don't know. I, but he, whatever for, I think Hollywood has just changed too much for him to be able to make that sort of movie anymore, but like, I, I always used to laugh at, I'm sorry. I got off track. We, I always used to laugh at the people who were like, oh, Tom Cruise. I don't, I don't buy it. I can't, I can't possibly see him in this role. And now I kind of get it because there is, there is just a real visceral pleasure to watching Alan Richardson.
JVL00:11:40But they, in, in Cruz's defense, they didn't write, so the, the film version of it treats the action very different than the book does. And, and in which this here, right. You know, when Tom Cruise is beating people up, it is most definitely in, you know, like when he's with the punks on the street, it is most definitely not like a guy who's just bullying his way through.
Sonny00:12:00No, no, different, it's different, very different. The best, the best fight scene in that movie is the one that takes place in the house where he like falls backwards into the shower, into the bathtub and they're trying to hit him with a sledgehammer, but they can't.
Vic00:12:12Yeah, the tub is actually protecting him.
JVL00:12:14It's like the, the, the heavier, more gritty version of a rate, the Raising Arizona fight. Yes, in the trailer with John Goodman. Done as a thriller, not for laughs. That's right.
Vic00:12:23That's right.
JVL00:12:24Uh, yeah. So do you guys like that? You like, what do you think of Willa Fitzgerald Victorino?
Vic00:12:28I I'm waiting. Uh, does it get, does it get it?
JVL00:12:31Reacher episode four. I'll, I'll come every single girl in every one of the books in the books. And, and, and in a pretty graphic way in the books. Yeah.
Vic00:12:41Or the episode, because I got ready to got to episode two, uh, and already it's a plus plus on the sex nudity. I mean, it is full frontal of the chief of police, but still, I was going to say, as you. As you know, a strict interpretation.
Sonny00:12:55Well, it's full frontal. To be fair. You, you don't see his balls cause they're in his stomach.
Vic00:12:59That's what they, that's what they tell you. So it's, you know, I have a question, you know, like how in Pam and Tommy,
Sonny00:13:04oh, it's all prosthetic, not potatoes. Right? You know, yes.
Vic00:13:11Well played ended there. Uh, uh, you know how in Pam and Tommy, how you, oh, all these prosthetics. Do you think that guy who's the chief of police, do you think that's a prosthetic or he just like, he's so fat, like, I don't care, I'll be naked, you know? And can they just get away with that? Just show that. Cause it was so horrible question. It's great question. Okay. My, my, my, I was what I said. Yeah.
JVL00:13:32I don't want to look at the same, same question about Kylo Ren in the, the, the night movie, was that really him in the end? He's hung upside down naked.
Sonny00:13:42Oh, I think it's him. Uh, you know, underrated, underrated. I, I think JBL, you must've seen him, but, uh, from you guys watch what we do in the shadows. Right. The, the show, not the, I saw the original, I saw the original movie, which I liked. So there's, there's a guy, there's a guy in this show. Who's playing like the medical examiner assistant. It's Guillermo from what we do in the shadows, but like you guys don't watch what I've watched, but he's great in this.
JVL00:14:09He is great in the shadow. Okay. Good. He is good. Yes. And the detective, the detective from Boston who looks like Andre Brower circa 1988, you know, he's got the same dimple.
Vic00:14:22It, it, it, it reminded me. Of Andre Brower. It's so funny that you should say that.
JVL00:14:25It's, it's, it's not the look at me that way, Sonny. No, it's Brooklyn. Nine, nine.
Sonny00:14:30Are you, you guys know more than one black actor, right?
JVL00:14:33I just, I said circa 1988 Morgan Freeman, Morgan Freeman.
Vic00:14:38I know. Uh, okay. Uh, so are you saying that if you, if, if, if you had a choice, you're a director and you could cast somebody who is physically the ideal, uh, of Jack Reacher, you just have to teach him how to act or somebody who is. Physically the exact opposite of how Lee Childs imagined him, but he's an amazing actor, you'd go with the latter. Yeah, I do. I mean, every, every single try to get them to be ripped and where, but I think
Sonny00:15:04it's, I think it's just rewrite the action scenes. No, but see, here's, here's, but this is the difference between TV and film, right? Like, I, I actually think we're dealing with two different mediums here and like on TV, I think I'll put up with a lot of like, not great acting necessarily. If like, you wouldn't accept. This, if this were a movie, if it, if it was like continually compelling and like is telling it and like, I, I, I think that Tom Cruise doing this sort of thing for like nine hours would not be as entertaining. Like, I, I like, I think it's, I think it's, I, they're just two different medium and two different, I don't know. They're doing two different things.
JVL00:15:44No, I think that's right. And also the Richardson sins as an actor are much easier to stomach on a small screen and you blow him up twice. 22 feet high. And yeah, it really is totally fine.
Vic00:15:57Whether he looks nothing like, you know, the, the, the, when they go to the flashback of the kid, but that's fine. People grow up.
Sonny00:16:03Um, that's another thing that actually really annoys me about the show. Are these what? No, but just the structure of it, the flashbacks to like, oh, here's how we, here's how we learned to be richer. I don't care. There are so many other shows that do this. Um, have you guys watched, um, uh, the Lupin on Netflix? Uh, it's, it's, so it's a French, uh, it's a French kind of thriller, heist, mystery type show, Lupin, L-U-P-I-N.
Vic00:16:31Does he turn into a wolf when the moon comes out?
Sonny00:16:34Yes, exactly. That's, that's the secret is he's actually a werewolf. Uh, no, but it's based on a French series of like children's essentially, uh, mystery books, but the, but like the way that show is structured at every, every episode flashes back to like him as a kid, here's how we learned this thing. Here's how we learned this thing. And I like, I mean. I'm just done with that structure. It annoys me. And even if it's very brief in these episodes, it's usually like a minute. Um, this is the, I don't need it.
JVL00:17:00One of only like two of the Reacher books that has that as a feature. This is not a regular feature of Reacher books and the flashback very, I remember reading this Reacher book and I was like, oh, we're going to learn about his brother. Like his brother is not a recurring character throughout, uh, throughout the books. They, I was interested why they chose this one and I think precisely because they wanted to, we're going to make it personal, right? I think that's why they chose to make, to do this one. Cause this is, you know, normally for each of these things are not personal. He just like rolls into town and then on his way through and see
Sonny00:17:36something he doesn't like and decides to, yeah.
JVL00:17:39You know, he's like, uh, you know, Ronan or walking, walking, walking tall. Now what was the, the, the, the Kung Fu, you know, the cane, the cane, Kung Fu, David Garrity walking through the things and writing wrongs.
Vic00:17:57Yeah. Do you know who, um, you know, he kind of, the problem is what, you know, Alan Richardson and I like him, I like him and I'm totally fine with him, but he reminds me of, he reminds me of, uh, David, David putty in Seinfeld a little bit, a little
Sonny00:18:12bit, a little bit of that happening the way he talks, the delivery, what he reminds, I tweeted something about this, but he reminds me of, uh, either Keith David or David Keith, the white.
Vic00:18:23Oh, you said that. Yes. It isn't David.
Sonny00:18:24I think it's David Keith, the white one.
Vic00:18:26Uh, Keith David is like the black guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sonny00:18:29Because he has, he has the like kind of deep set eyes, the like kind of Faraday eyes and like the big forehead. And I don't know. He just looks very similar to him.
JVL00:18:40Look, for all we know, this gentleman went to Stanford. Uh, you know, I don't know, maybe got 15, 80 of those SATs and went to Stanford. He's a, he was a military brat.
Sonny00:18:49Like Sonny, he is, he is from, uh, North Dakota. It's very. No, it's very funny. I, I tweeted, I tweeted this thing about him looking like David Keith or Keith David, whichever one, the white one. And, uh, and my friend, uh, Peter Suderman, who I do across the movie aisle with texted me. He was like, holy shit. Alan Richson, Richson is the, is, is, uh, Reacher on the show. He went to our, he went to our school. So I went to middle school or middle school with, uh, Peter in Niceville, Florida. And that's where this kid is from. He's, he was from Niceville, Florida. Uh, grew up to be brick shit house big and was, uh, he was like an actor.
Vic00:19:28And, uh, I didn't know you went to high school with, uh, Peter.
Sonny00:19:31So I, uh, middle school, we were in, we were in middle school and then I moved to Virginia, but you know, Florida, when we lived in Florida, I did not know Peter in, in middle school. That's funny. No, but it was very, it was, it was just a random thing. It was like, he is from not my hometown, but one of the places I stopped in on my tour.
Vic00:19:50So his parents were probably in the, in the, in the same, in the air force, or maybe, or something, who knows?
Sonny00:19:54Yeah, I don't know.
Vic00:19:55That's amazing.
JVL00:19:56No, he's very handsome and he's in great shape.
Sonny00:19:59Good looking man does great. He, I'm sure he does a lot of reps, as you say, the low, the lean meat.
Vic00:20:05Yes, I was like, he's who he is, who you'd want as a cellmate. That's what I say.
Sonny00:20:15JBL. Was there something you wanted to say at the end? I was just, I know, I know. That's a good, I know. That's good.
Vic00:20:20I thought that was said, that was, I related to the, the, the finance guy.
JVL00:20:24I'm like, oh man, that's going to be me. I just had a little story. I, for my coaching gig, I had to go to a four hour presentation on child sexual abuse and, uh, it was great. There were about 60 of us in the audience. And, uh, I, I just want to say this was centered around watching two videos, each about 45 minutes long and the lady who was running this session. The videos were run from, uh, a Blu-ray disc and, uh, had the projector set to the wrong aspect ratio. So that for 45 minutes, I had to watch these people with like stumpy fat things. And I sat there twitching and I just wanted to go up and say, may I please have the remote control so I can fix your picture size here, because this is out of, I, I, I just, and I, and I found myself wondering, this is my nightmare. All of these other people, do they not see it? Is nobody else bothered? Cause everybody else just seems like they're like, oh, sure. It's just normal. And I, I just, who can live like that at home?
Sonny00:21:36So I'm, I'm surprised the motion smoothing wasn't on. It was pad and scan.
JVL00:21:42It was an absolute infamy.
Vic00:21:46I'm sure they were all thinking it was fine.
?00:21:52I'll see you next time.
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