HOO RAH

Chris Pratt’s MAGA Fever Dream Show Is Laughably Awful

Amazon Prime Video’s “The Terminal List” is pure right-wing propaganda in Season 2.

A tormented military veteran who’s traumatized by wartime losses and betrayals, hunted by the government, and an unkillable murder machine, Chris Pratt’s ex-US Navy SEAL James Reece is a modern-day Rambo envisioned in Call of Duty terms, and The Terminal List lionizes him with a lustiness that’s borderline laughable.

Red meat for the red-state crowd, David DiGilio’s Prime Video series peddled a one-note, gung-ho vengeance fantasy in its first season, and it does much the same in its sophomore outing (Oct. 21). Its conservative bent, however, isn’t its problem. Rather, the show’s real shortcoming (this time based on Jack Carr’s second franchise novel, True Believer) is its crude conventionality. Generic and simplistic in every respect, it’s a by-the-books dadcore effort exemplified by Pratt’s performance of scowls, stronger scowls, and no-really-I’m-very-upset super scowls.

Rugged country music ballads, bible passages, and a shot of James sharing a profoundly knowing look with an African lion are all elements of The Terminal List’s second go-round, whose story picks up with a scruffy James sailing in the Indian Ocean following the completion of his “terminal list”—a rundown of villains responsible for eliminating his squadron that included, most painfully, his best friend Ben (Taylor Kitsch). James is still dying from a brain tumor, and on his wayward journey, he’s frequently visited by hallucinations of Ben that stoke his guilt and aren’t alleviated by his dwindling supply of pills.

While Ben roams the high seas as a fugitive—because he’s (wrongly) believed to have killed the Secretary of Defense during his revenge mission—terrorist Amin Al-Nawaz (Shadi Janho) orchestrates a deadly attack on a London Christmas market. Amin leads a new version of Al-Qaeda that’s tech-savvy, with its chief posting regularly on social media (“Making terrors into TikToks”). No one likes these monsters, who claim to be out for retribution for American crimes, but on Real Time with Bill Maher, the host suggests that James is not that different from them, thereby giving guest Katie Buranek (Constance Wu), James’ journalist pal, an opportunity to publicly defend his “true believer” honor.

The Terminal List gathers steam slowly, with James spending its first episode alone on his boat and its second at an African gaming reserve owned by Mr. Hastings (Arnold Vosloo), the father of James’ former comrade Raife (Tom Hopper). There, he reconnects with his special-ops side (by fighting poachers), shares the aforementioned meaningful moment with a big cat, and Pratt’s brooding is aggravatingly monotonous.

James is a man without a sense of humor, which makes him a fundamentally bad fit for the actor, whose stardom is predicated on goofy charm. Watching the Guardians of the Galaxy headliner simply grimace, seethe, and grimace some more is to see an A-lister lose sight of what distinguishes him from the leading-man pack.

Ridiculously, James is brought back into the fold because he’s the only man CIA bigwig Vic Rodriguez (Yul Vazquez) thinks can stop Amin—because the evildoer has partnered with James’ old mate Mo Farooq (Dar Salim). James doesn’t believe Mo would switch sides, and working with loyal sniper Freddy (Gabriel Luna), he endeavors to find Mo and figure out what the heck is going on.

Meanwhile, Katie learns her outlet has been purchased by Vasili Adrenov (For All Mankind’s Costa Ronin), a Russian oligarch who views reporters as “warriors of truth” and who, with trusted sidekick Yana (Olga Kurylenko), is striving to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.

The Terminal List envisions Katie as courageous and tough-as-nails to match James, yet no one in this show can hold a candle to the protagonist’s glowering badassery. In every skirmish, James proves himself a one-man army, and his invincibility is matched by his featurelessness; aside from being very sad about those he’s lost, and very mad about those who’ve turned on him, he’s a total blank.

The action sequences are just as bland. Enlisting a collection of veterans as writers and directors, DiGilio fails to concoct a single adrenalized moment worth remembering or a dramatic dynamic that isn’t clichéd.

As tradition dictates, conspiracies abound in The Terminal List, and they all connect to Reese, who turns out to be the axis around which the growing global terror threat revolves. The series’ bombshell revelations about its players’ allegiances are both foreseeable and old hat. Clunkier still, its decision to split time between James and Raife, the latter of whom teams up with Katie to figure out who’s stealing his arms shipments to Ukraine and giving them to al Qaeda, is misguided. Hopper is a burly and intimidating presence, but his unimpeachably noble and lethal character is even duller than Pratt’s do-gooder.

The Terminal List has James and his cohorts torture enemies with righteous impunity and viciousness, and it uses Ukraine and Russia’s ongoing war as a key plot point. Nonetheless, nothing about this hawkish affair feels genuinely real-world; its nods to current geopolitical realities are just window dressing for a hackneyed tale of tormented good guys overcoming personal demons to take down close-to-home baddies.

In its race to the climax, the series cuts corners, moving at a fast pace that underscores its silliness while, mercifully, sparing viewers undue dilly-dallying. Such speediness can’t offset the material’s stock types and situations, which would be far more at home in a first-person shooter video game.

After nearly eight hours, The Terminal List doesn’t even provide a satisfactory resolution, instead closing on an exposition dump and a ludicrously convenient discovery that sets up a potential third season. Given its hollowness, an incomplete ending isn’t totally shocking.

However, given the success of Prime Video’s Reacher—a hit with a similar target demographic which embraces the drollness of its conceit and eccentric main character—what is surprising is this rah-rah adventure’s allergy to anything lighthearted, quirky, or novel. Awash in jarhead jargon and weapons porn, it’s merely grim, affected “hero warrior” cosplay.

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Nick SchagerEntertainment Critic

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