For almost 30 years, the Jack Reacher thriller novels by Lee Child (and, more recently, by his brother Andrew) have asked the question, "What if a guy was big?" Oh, there's more to Reacher than his 6'5" height, hyper-muscular physique, and massive hands that at various points have been compared to the size of both dinner plates and frozen chickens. A former Army policeman, he has cast aside all possessions and entanglements since his discharge, living an itinerant life where he travels from place to place with nothing but the clothes on his back, a passport, and a folding travel toothbrush. He's an investigative genius, with a keen eye and near-perfect recall — in the latest season of the Prime Video series adapted from the books, a cop refers to him as "Sherlock Has-No-Homes" — and other assorted mental gifts, like the ability to always know the time without needing to consult a watch. Mostly, though, what the books and now this TV show are interested in is dramatizing what happens when a man this large, strong, and willful wanders into one dangerous situation after another.
Infamously, Tom Cruise — not a man who towers over his co-stars, nor one whose hands could be compared to poultry — bought the rights to play the character in a pair of movies. The first of those, 2012's Jack Reacher, is in hindsight a really entertaining and well-crafted action movie, even if Cruise in no way physically resembles the character. The sequel, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, is forgettable, but his (lack of) height isn't the problem. When Amazon acquired the rights to turn the books into another of its endless supply of Dad TV competence porn shows, it made sure to get a guy who looked like the Reacher from the page in the colossal form of Alan Ritchson. Ritchson's not nearly the actor Cruise is, and his Reacher often seems like a meathead rather than the master detective whose intellect is meant to go hand-in-hand with his awesome size and strength.
Still, the series (adapted by Nick Santora) has become really creative over time at inventing new ways to demonstrate how a man built like Ritchson could maim or kill people.