- “What I mean is, the cheapest woman tends to be the one you pay for.”
- ―Jack Reacher
Jack Reacher is the protagonist of a series of crime thriller novels by British author Lee Child,[1] a 2012 theatrical adaptation, its 2016 sequel, and a television series on Amazon Prime Video. In the stories, Jack Reacher was a major in the US Army's military police. Having left the Army at age 36, Reacher roams the United States, taking odd jobs and investigating suspicious and frequently dangerous situations.
As of November 1st 2022, 27 novels plus some short stories have been published. The most recent novel is No Plan B. Three novels have been adapted for the screen. Two of the adaptations are films, starring Tom Cruise as Reacher: Jack Reacher (2012) from the ninth novel, One Shot, and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) from the eighteenth novel, Never Go Back. The third adaption is a television series on Amazon Prime Video, starring Alan Ritchson: Reacher (2022). This was adapted from the first novel, Killing Floor, and a second season has been ordered, which will adapt Bad Luck and Trouble.
Fictional biography[]
Childhood and formative years[]
Jack Reacher was born on a military base in Berlin, on 29 October 1960. Regular references are made to the fact that Reacher's given name is Jack, which is not a nickname for John, and that he has no middle name. His military record officially refers to him as "Jack (none) Reacher".[2] From the time he was a boy, his family, even his mother, simply called him "Reacher", an appellation that has stayed with him, but was never given to his brother.[3]
Reacher's mother Josephine Moutier Reacher (née Moutier) was a French national, and Reacher was fluent in French from early childhood,[4] but as he admits in The Affair (2011) he speaks the language Un peu, mais lentement ("A little, but slowly"). Reacher's maternal grandfather was at the Battle of Verdun in the First World War and in the French Resistance in the Second, and lived to a ripe old age, which in Reacher's view means that his grandfather had "beaten the odds". Reacher's mother as a 13 year old guided Allied Air Crews to safety in WWII.[4]
Military years and profile[]
After being shunted around the world, growing up on U.S. military bases where his father, Stan, a Marine Captain, was stationed, he gained an education in basic survival as well as an opportunity to enter the United States Military Academy at West Point. After four years at West Point (1979 to 1983) Reacher achieved the ranks of 2nd lieutenant, 1st lieutenant, captain, and major,[5] including an intervening demotion from major to captain[6] in 1990[3] during his tenure in the military police. His commanding officer, Leon Garber, promoted Reacher twice in 18 months, making him the youngest peacetime major anyone could remember.[7] During his tenure, his achievements were recognised in the form of citations and awards including the Silver Star, the Defense Superior Service Medal, two Legions of Merit, Soldier's Medal, Bronze Star, Army Commendation Medal,[8] and a second Silver Star and Purple Heart for wounds sustained in the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983.[3][9]
While his Silver Star and Purple Heart are cited on his profile, all of the other medal citations involve official secrets and are therefore redacted. The short story "Deep Down" hints that he possibly was awarded the Legion of Merit as a result of exposing a female liaison officer who was leaking confidential information to the Soviet Union.[10]
Reacher served in the Army's Military Police Corps, resigning his commission and mustering out at the rank of major. His unit, the fictional 110th Special Investigations Unit,[2] was formed to handle exceptionally tough cases. He left the armed forces in 1997, partly due to a reduction in the forces and partly because he verbally offended a lieutenant colonel during an investigation in Mississippi, who then singled him out for discharge.[11]
Among his formal qualifications, Reacher is described as the only non-Marine to win the Wimbledon Cup,[12] a US Marine Corps 1000 Yard Invitational Rifle Competition; achieving a record score in 1988.[13] (Although the Wimbledon Cup is in fact a 1,000 yard long-range shooting competition, it is not at all exclusive to the US Marine Corps; since 1875, the championship has been held in most years by the National Rifle Association during the National Rifle and Pistol Matches, and is open to both military and civilian shooters. The actual winner of the 1988 Wimbledon Cup was Earl R. Libetrau, with a score of 197-10X, and 99 on the shootoff for the win—which was not a record score.)[14][15] Anecdotally his fitness reports rated him well above average in the classroom, excellent in the field, fluently bilingual in English and French, passable in Spanish, outstanding on all man-portable weaponry, and beyond outstanding at hand-to-hand combat.[16]
Later years[]
After leaving the Army, Reacher became a drifter, his only baggage a folding toothbrush,[1] although after the September 11 attacks, with restrictions on wire transfers in the light of fraud he is obliged to carry an ATM card[17] and photo ID in the form of a (generally expired) American passport.[18]
Emily Sargent, while conducting an interview with Lee Child, describes Reacher's post-military life as follows:
You will never find Reacher going to the laundry or doing the ironing. When his clothes get dirty he simply goes to the local hardware store and buys a functional pair of chinos and a workman's shirt and stuffs the old ones in the bin. No mortgage, no wife, no ties, he is a perfectly free agent, unlimited and unbound, incapable of ever settling down.[19]
Lee Child describes Reacher's obsession to wander about:
He's an ex-military policeman, and he was demobilized in his middle thirties after having served all of his adult life in the [U.S.] Army and having grown up on Marine bases, because his father was a Marine. The idea was to have a character that was plausibly rootless. Most people who are wanderers do it for other reasons—they are mentally ill, or something like that. Reacher is completely competent, but he's just habituated to this fragmented life in the military, so he can't settle into civilian society. The idea of staying anywhere for more than a few days is anathema to him.[20]
Physical appearance[]
Bryan Curtis, in an interview with Lee Child, describes Reacher thus:
His face looked like it had been chipped out of rock by a sculptor who had ability but not much time.[1]
From A Wanted Man: "He was one of the largest men she had ever seen outside the NFL. He was extremely tall, and extremely broad, and long-armed, and long-legged. The lawn chair was regular size, but it looked tiny under him. It was bent and crushed out of shape. His knuckles were nearly touching the ground. His neck was thick and his hands were the size of dinner plates...A wild man. But not really. Underneath everything else seemed strangely civilized....His gaze was both wise and appealing, both friendly and bleak, both frank and utterly cynical."[21]
Reacher is described as being 6 feet 5 inches (1.96 m) tall, weighing 210–250 pounds (95–113 kg) and having a 50-inch (130 cm) chest.[22][2] In Never Go Back, he is described as having "a six-pack like a cobbled city street, a chest like a suit of NFL armor, biceps like basketballs, and subcutaneous fat like a Kleenex tissue."[23] In his youth, his physical appearance was likened to that of a "bulked-up greyhound".[24] He also reveals that his size is purely genetic; he states in Persuader[25] and Never Go Back that he is not much of an exercise enthusiast.[23]
He has various scars, most notably a collection of roughly stitched scars on his abdomen caused by a bombing in Lebanon,[26] with ugly raised welts that are later instrumental in saving his life, a 3-to-4-inch-wide (8 to 10 cm) white scar that intersects his shrapnel scar that he received during a knife fight in Gone Tomorrow. Reacher attributes his survival to the rough MASH stitch work.[27]
His various other scars include one from a chest shot with a .38 Special.[28] and a powder burn from a near-miss at point blank range, and one on his arm where his brother struck him with a chisel.[29]
He suffers his first ever broken nose in Worth Dying For, at over 50 years of age. He resets the bone with a thump from his palm and later puts on a plaster bandage made of duct tape.
Demeanor and personality[]
Reacher himself expounds on a hypothesis about this vagrant lifestyle in Never Go Back. He states that he is genetically predisposed to roaming about. He asserts that some peoples had a natural wanderlust, such as the British Empire, the Vikings, and the Polynesians. He recognizes the economic reasons for their voyages but argues that "some of them could not stop". He believes that, when prehistoric humans lived in small bands, a gene evolved to prevent inbreeding. Consequently, "every generation and every small band had at least one person who had to wander". This would lead to "mixing up of gene pools" and would be "healthier all around". Reacher concludes:
Template:Blockquote
Reacher's large physique means his character is sometimes mistaken by other people. For example, in Die Trying, Reacher is wrongly suspected by the FBI of being involved in a kidnapping, which assesses him (solely on the basis of a few photos) as such: "The big guy is different. Different clothes, different stance, different physically. He could be foreign, at least partly, or maybe second generation. Fair hair and blue eyes, but there's something in his face. Maybe he's European, perhaps a European mercenary or terrorist."[30] Reacher is aware of this perception. In Make Me Reacher gets off a train in a remote town called Mother's Rest, simply because he likes the name of the town. When he sees a woman approaching him with a look of expectation, he immediately understands that the person she was waiting for must be very tall like him, as it is his standout feature when people first meet him.
In Echo Burning, Reacher narrates how he first turned "his fear into aggression". He was about four when he watched a television show on space adventures. One episode depicted a space monster which then terrified the young Reacher. He was unable to sleep for days, thinking the monster was under his bed and would get him if he tried to sleep. According to Reacher, he then became angry: "Not at myself for being afraid, because as far as I was concerned the thing was totally real and I should be afraid. I got mad at the thing for making me afraid. For threatening me". Reacher then one night "kind of exploded with fury". In his words, Reacher "raced down the monster" and successfully changed his fear into fury. He also stated he has never been scared since.[31]
This fact is later referenced in Never Go Back, when an Army psychological study of fear in children is cited that shows Reacher to have abnormally fast reflexes and aggression levels at the age of six; Reacher believes that this abnormal level of aggression at that age is not due to genetics, as the Army report suggested, but because he got tired of being frightened, and trained himself "to turn fear into aggression, automatically".[32]
Reacher seldom shows remorse for the numerous felonies he perpetrates and has a primal sense of justice. In Personal, after killing a thug, he defends his actions to his distraught accomplice, Casey Nice, by stating the man could have spent his life performing good deeds such as "helping old ladies across the street", "raising funds for Africa" or "volunteering in the library". Instead the man extorted money and hurt people and when "finally he opened the wrong door, what came out at him was his problem, not mine".[33]
This primitivity on the part of Reacher is commented upon in Never Go Back, in which Reacher is described by Susan Turner as being like "something feral....It's like you've been sanded down to nothing but yes and no, and you and them, and black and white, and live or die. You're like a predator. Cold and hard." (p. 176–177) However, when she witnesses Reacher's outrage at the hurt inflicted upon an innocent waitress, she reconsiders and states that he is actually not feral as she had earlier presumed. Furthermore, she notes that Reacher had until then attempted to solve only her problems, neglecting the problems of his own:
And you've done nothing but chip away at my problem. You're ignoring your own, with the Big Dog. Which is just as serious. Therefore, you still care for others. Which means you can't really be feral. I imagine caring for others is the first thing to go. And you still know right from wrong. Which all means you're OK.[23]
This underlying kindness perceived by Turner is visible in many of Reacher's actions: he stands up for the right of women in both Echo Burning, whose central plot involves him aiding a woman's escape from her abusive husband, and in Worth Dying For, in which he breaks the nose of an abusive husband for beating up his wife.[34] He is also shown to be sympathetic to those in need, as seen in The Hard Way where he bequeaths Edward Lane's fees paid to him for the medical treatment and living expenses of a man whom Lane had betrayed many years back.[35]
This point is further elucidated in Personal, when Reacher reminisces while standing at his mother's grave:
She had said, 'You've got the strength of two normal boys. What are you going to do with it?' I hadn't replied. Our silence was part of the ritual. She answered for me. She said, 'You're going to do the right thing.' And I had tried, mostly, which had sometimes caused me trouble, and sometimes won me medals of my own.[36]
In other media[]
Film[]
- Main article: Jack Reacher (film)
The 2012 action thriller film Jack Reacher was adapted from the 9th novel, 2005's One Shot, and starred Tom Cruise in the title role.[37] The film was directed by Christopher McQuarrie.[38] Cruise reprised the role in the sequel, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, an adaptation of the 18th Jack Reacher book, Never Go Back, which was directed by Edward Zwick, and released 21 October 2016.[39]
Tom Cruise's casting was met with criticism from fans of the book series, primarily because the disparity in their heights, with Reacher portrayed as a blond, 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m) tall, 250-pound man in the novels, while Cruise is a 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) tall brunet.[22][40] In 2012 Child commented on Cruise's casting by saying, "Reacher's size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way." In 2018, Child expressed the opinion that the fans were right about the height of actor portraying the character.[41]
Television[]
- Main article: Reacher (Jack Reacher)
On November 14th 2018, Child announced that he made a deal with Skydance Television and Paramount Television to produce a Jack Reacher series based on Child's novels, during which feature films would no longer be produced. He also stated that Tom Cruise would not be returning to the role, and that another actor would be cast in the role, which he hoped would represent the character more properly than seen in the films. Paramount Television and Skydance Television are said to be producing the potential series. Child said of the recasting:
"I really enjoyed working with Cruise. He's a really, really nice guy. We had a lot of fun. But ultimately the readers are right. The size of Reacher is really, really important and it's a big component of who he is...So what I've decided to do is – there won't be any more movies with Tom Cruise. Instead, we're going to take it to Netflix or something like that. Long-form streaming television, with a completely new actor. We're rebooting and starting over and we're going to try and find the perfect guy.[41]
On 15 July 2019, Variety reported that Amazon will develop the series for Prime Video with Nick Santora as the showrunner, writer and executive producer alongside Child, Don Granger, Christopher McQuarrie, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross.[42][43] On 4 September 2020, Alan Ritchson was cast as the titular role.[44] On 2 December 2021, the series, simply titled Reacher, premiered 4 February 2022.[45]
Behind the scenes[]
- Reacher's birth date in the films is 18 October 1974 whereas in the novels it is October 29th, 1960.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Curtis, Bryan (20 December 2012). "The Curious Case of Lee Child: Before Tom Cruise could become Jack Reacher, Jim Grant had to become Lee Child".
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Stansfield, James (22 November 2012). "Who is Jack Reacher?".
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Child, Lee. "Jack Reacher". leechild.com.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Child (2004). The Enemy.
- ↑ Bad Luck and Trouble, page 11.
- ↑ Child, Lee (2004). "Chapter 25", The Enemy. TransworldDigital. ISBN 0-553-81585-7.
- ↑ Child, Lee (2000). Tripwire. Jove Books. ISBN 978-0515128635.
- ↑ Child, Lee (2016). Night School. Delacorte Press, page 322. ISBN 978-0804178808.
- ↑ Child, Lee (2010). 61 Hours, page 22. ISBN 9780440243694. "Reacher had been an army liaison officer serving with the Marine Corps at the time of the barracks bombing. He had been badly wounded in the attack....The wound had healed fast and completely. It had left what the army called a disfiguring scar, which implied a real mess."
- ↑ Child, Lee (2012). Deep Down. Delacorte Press, page 86. ISBN 978-0-345-53710-2.
- ↑ Child, Lee (2015). "Chapter 23", Make Me. Delacorte Press. ISBN 9780804178785.
- ↑ Child, Lee. Die Trying.
- ↑ Child, Lee (2005). "Chapter 12", One Shot. Transworld Digital. ISBN 0-385-33668-3.
- ↑ Association, National Rifle. "An NRA Shooting Sports Journal | The Wimbledon Cup" (en). An NRA Shooting Sports Journal.
- ↑ You must specify title = and url = when using {{cite web}}. (2022-04-12).
- ↑ Child, Lee (2010). 61 Hours. New York: Delacorte Press. ISBN 9780440243694.
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedKevinNance2012 - ↑ Drummond, Steve (20 October 2011). "Lee Child's 'The Affair': Sixteen Books In, Has Jack Reacher Still Got It?". NPR.org. National Public Radio.
- ↑ Sargent, Emily (30 October 2011). "Killer instinct: Is Tom Cruise the right man to play Lee Child's savage anti-hero on screen?".
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedRobertBidinotto2007 - ↑ Child, Lee (2012). A Wanted Man. Delacorte Press, page 169. ISBN 9780385344333.
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedCarolynKellogg2012 - ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 Child, Lee (2013). "Chapter 35", Never Go Back. London: Transworld Publishers. ISBN 9781409030805.
- ↑ Child, Lee (2013). High Heat. Delacorte Press, page 41. ISBN 978-0-345-54664-7.
- ↑ Child, Lee (2003). "Chapter 3", Persuader. "I never work out."
- ↑ Child, Lee (1999). Killing Floor. "He had served thirteen years in the Army, and the only time he was wounded it wasn't with a bullet. It was with a fragment of a Marine sergeant's jawbone."
- ↑ Child, Lee (1999). "Chapter 83", Killing Floor.
- ↑ Child, Lee (2013). "Chapter 35", Never Go Back. Delacorte Press. "She traced around his ear, and his neck, and his chest. She put the tip of her pinkie in his bullet hole. It fit just right. 'A .38,' he said."
- ↑ Child, Lee (2004). "Chapter 6", The Enemy. London: Transworld Publishers. ISBN 0-553-81585-7.
- ↑ Child, Lee (1999). "Chapter 22", Die Trying. ISBN 9780515125023.
- ↑ Child, Lee (2001). "Chapter 6", Echo Burning. London: Transworld Publishers. ISBN 0-515-13331-0. "One night I just kind of exploded with fury. I yelled O-K-, come out and try it! Just damn well try it! I'll beat the shit right out of you! I raced it down. I turned the fear into aggression."
- ↑ Child, Lee (2013). "Chapters 30, 38", Never Go Back. London: Transworld Publishers. ISBN 9781409030805.
- ↑ Child, Lee (2014). "Chapter 28", Personal. London: Transworld Publishers. ISBN 9781473508774.
- ↑ Child, Lee (2010). "Chapter 6", Worth Dying For. London: Transworld Publishers. ISBN 9781407083131. "Reacher hit him, a straight right to the nose, a big vicious blow, his knuckles driving through cartilage and bone and crushing it all flat."
- ↑ Child, Lee (2006). "Chapter 47", The Hard Way. London: Transworld Publishers. ISBN 0-385-33669-1. "I'm going to send Hobart down to Birmingham or Nashville and get him fixed up right. I'm going to buy him a lifetime's supply of spare parts and I'm going to rent him a place to live and I'm going to give him some walking-around money because my guess is he's not very employable right now. At least not in his old trade. And then if there's anything left, then sure, I'll buy myself a new shirt."
- ↑ Child, Lee (2014). "Chapter 18", Personal. London: Transworld Publishers. ISBN 9781473508774.
- ↑ Fleming, Mike (15 July 2011). "Tom Cruise Locked To Play Jack Reacher In 'One Shot' For Paramount And Skydance". Deadline. Retrieved 17 July 2011.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ McWeeny, Drew. "Why hasn't Paramount started making Jack Reacher movies?", HitFix, 20 October 2010.
- ↑ "Ed Zwick In Talks To Direct 'Jack Reacher' Sequel", deadline.com, 19 May 2015.
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedAndreaSachs2012 - ↑ 41.0 41.1 Andreeva, Nellie (November 14, 2018). "'Jack Reacher' TV Series In The Works". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved November 15, 2018.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ Throne, Nick (15 July 2019). "Amazon to Develop 'Jack Reacher' Series".
- ↑ "'Jack Reacher' TV Series in the Works at Amazon". The Hollywood Reporter (15 July 2019).
- ↑ Andreeba, Nellie (September 4, 2020). "'Jack Reacher': Alan Ritchson Cast As Title Character In Amazon TV Series". Deadline Hollywood.
- ↑ "Big News: 'Reacher' TV Series Starring Alan Ritchson Gets Premiere Date, Trailer". Deadline (2 December 2021).