Based on the best-selling novel by Jack Carr, The Terminal List follows James Reece (Chris Pratt) after his entire platoon of Navy SEALs is ambushed during a high-stakes covert mission. Reece returns home to his family with conflicting memories of the event and questions about his culpability. However, as new evidence comes to light, Reece discovers dark forces working against him, endangering not only his life, but the lives of those he loves. 

 

The Terminal List isn’t all gun toting, smash and grab, bullet riddled violence. While it follows Reece as he hunts those responsible for the deaths of his team in a Bourne-esque kinda plot, the twists and turns alongside Pratt’s performance will keep you engaged throughout. The opening couple of episodes are brilliantly shot and cut to give you the real sense of confusion Reece is experiencing to the extent that you begin to question whether or not he really is at the heart of a grand conspiracy or if it all is just in his head.

 

The action sequences are brutal with one of the most excruciating scenes of torture that I’ve seen in a long time. The military set pieces are executed in such a way that you feel the full fury and heat of battle and it will leave you with a true sense of the confusion and brutality of modern warfare. 

 

Unsurprisingly The Terminal List has been seen as an opportunity, judging by some reviewers' pieces, to have a crack at Chris Pratt. I will never understand the simmering resentment that exists in some dark recesses of the internet towards him or the reviewers that insist on pigeon holing him into just being the goofy but lovable Andy from Parks and Rec from seven years ago. Pratt is superb here in a tricky and demanding role that can’t be played for laughs. You walk away having witnessed a confused, sick, and desperate man that has one card up his sleeve: he is a weapon. And he plays that card to perfection.   

 

The Terminal List is a brutal, action-stacked and narratively engaging adult thriller of a series anchored by a star turn from Chris Pratt in his most nuanced and grounded role yet.