The Terminal List

The Terminal List aspires to be a thinking person’s thriller, but it’s neither too thinky nor too thrilling. But damn if it doesn’t feel a bit invigorating at times to go down the dark hallways of this world of people of action, and think, yeah, this motherfucker is ours.

Ambiguity dwindles immediately, as the show overextends a solid revenge plot through eight episodes of okay-at-best action and endless shadowy meetings between shady military-industrial types.

There are far too many moments during “The Terminal List” when you feel like you’re watching boys playing soldier, or violence inspired by videogames. At the same time, the story—based on the book by Jack Carr and adapted by David DiGilio—has adequate forward momentum, despite its very obvious effort to march a viewer through a gantlet of 21st-century villainy.

[Chris Pratt is] miscast in this occasionally thrilling and well-paced but ultimately predictable, formulaic and cliché-riddled series. In a role that calls for an actor to demonstrate a wide range of the deepest possible human emotions, Pratt comes across as slightly stiff and not fully immersed in the character.

This eight-part Amazon Prime Video miniseries blasts its way through drab and ridiculous conventions with humorless, extreme prejudice. It somehow manages to generate bingeable suspense, though, and even a hint that its well-worn twists have something to say about how power is abused these days.

Those with an appetite for the Jacks (Reacher and Ryan) will find something to enjoy in the violent infallibility of Reece. There is plenty of skull cracking and head shots. But the plot, in so much as there is one, will make about as much sense to viewers as it does to the heavily concussed Reece.