• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 5 hours ago

“Reacher” pulls no punches in its action-packed fourth season starting Monday on Amazon Prime.

This is a show for anyone who loves action TV shows and movies featuring a title character facing long odds who nevertheless gets the best of roomfuls of thugs and leaves them dead or close to it.

This is the modus operandi for Jack Reacher (played by Alan Ritchson), the laconic, nomadic former Army Military Police major who has a gift for assessing his surroundings and the people in it.

In his post-military life, he is a rootless, but self-confident individual who roams from town to town. He is a man who cannot help getting involved when he sees wrongdoing.

The fourth-season premiere opens in Philadelphia at 2:30 a.m. and Reacher has boarded a subway after enjoying a late-night cheese steak.

On the train, he sees a woman crying softly to herself and the always-perceptive Reacher senses she is in trouble.

He goes down to the end of the car to talk to her. But she commits suicide right in front of him.

This sets him on the trail of whatever she was suffering from, and he finds himself in the middle of a cover-up conspiracy at the highest levels of government.

One of the thrills of watching “Reacher” is trying to figure out how he is going to wipe the floor with a bunch of bad guys even when he is shackled or bound by the wrists and ankles.

We know he is going to escape somehow, because otherwise there would be no show. 

The “Reacher” character was created by thriller writer Lee Childs, and played in the movies by Tom Cruise.

Cruise is 5’7” tall, and one of our greatest stars. But Alan Ritchson is 6’3” and built like a brick wall. Ritchson’s Reacher is a more intimidating presence. 

I previewed Episode One of “Reacher” on Friday, and its cliffhanger ending had me immediately staying around for Episode Two. This show is so suspenseful that watching it can be physically draining.

When “Reacher” premiered in 2022, the TV Blog named it one on of the best shows of the year. Now starting its fourth season, it has lost none of the action and suspense that it had four years ago.

The fourth season of “Reacher” starts streaming on Monday (August 10) on Amazon Prime.