Before its arrival on the Prime Video platform on July 1, the series “The Terminal List”, with Chris Pratt and Taylor Kitsch, was presented in preview this Saturday at the Monte-Carlo Festival. Here is our opinion on the first episodes.
As he once again faces the dinosaurs currently in the cinema in Jurassic World: The World After, Chris Pratt is preparing to return to his first love, television, with The Terminal List, a new series which will land on July 1 on Amazon Prime Video and which premiered yesterday at the Monte-Carlo Festival in the presence of Taylor Kitsch and creator David DiGilio.
Revealed by Everwood in the early 2000s, and then seen in Newport Beach, Chris Pratt had not held a leading role on the small screen since the end of Parks and Recreation in 2015. And for his reunion with the format serial, so he decided to turn to action and trust Antoine Fuqua (Equalizer, Training Day), who produced and directed the first episode of The Terminal List, and knows a lot about muscular thrillers and panting.
Adapted from the eponymous novel by Jack Carr, this eight-part series sees Chris Pratt play James Reece, a Navy SEAL who survived a deadly ambush against his regiment during a secret mission in the Middle East.
Back home in California, with the painful memory of this event in mind, Reece finds his family and wonders about his responsibility for this tragedy. But as new evidence emerges, he soon suspects that a dark organization is working against him and endangering not only his own life, but those of those he loves as well.
From its first episode, The Terminal List ticks all the boxes of the military series with a tense plot, highly successful action sequences, soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress that eats away at them, and a large-scale conspiracy. .
2022 Amazon Prime Video Chris Pratt, aka James Reece, in The Terminal List
But while we might have feared a product in the vein of NCIS or SEAL Team, which remain quite classic both in what they tell and in their staging, the Amazon series has the good idea to bring a real psychological and paranoid dimension to the plot since Reece’s memory seems to be playing tricks on him.
His spirit, which blurs the line between past and present, as well as dream and reality, thus pushes us more than ever to wonder if he is sinking into madness or if he is really the victim of a terrible plot. .
With the key to a nice realization, which avoids us the simple flashbacks, and offers a real cachet to the whole. To which are added muscular sequences stylized and well choreographed – including a confrontation in the hospital between Reece and several attackers – which should delight fans of action. And the fans of Antoine Fuqua.
Without revolutionizing the genre or the codes of the series or the action film against a background of army and conspiracy, The Terminal List is therefore a good surprise which should easily establish itself as one of the events of the summer. . Chris Pratt certainly doesn’t find his best role there – we’ve known him to be more involved – but the cast is solid as a whole, with a special mention for Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians) and Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights).