THE TERMINAL LIST -- An Action-Packed Political Thriller

Review by Dan Skip Allen

Amazon Studios has done it again. They have found another book to adapt to the screen. This time it's Jack Carr's The Terminal List, adapted into a series produced and starring Chris Pratt and written by David DiGilio. It's a pretty dense story and series. This might be one of Prime Video's best book adaptations yet.

James Reece (Chris Pratt) is a Navy Seal on a covert mission in the middle east when he realizes that his team has been ambushed, and they struggle just to survive. After he gets home, he starts to recover from a form of PTSD. His friends, including Ben Edwards Jean (Taylor Kitsch), help him understand his condition. When a plucky young reporter, Katie Beranek (Constance Wu), starts snooping around about the ambush, this sets her and Reece on a spiral of corruption and shady businessmen and government officials.
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Jeanne Tripplehorn plays the Secretary of Defense, who gets embroiled in this man's hunt to discover what's going on in his head and who else is responsible. Along with her is a shady businessman played by Jai Courtney. Together these two and others have conspired to create a drug that makes PTSD impossible for soldiers, making them perfect soldiers. Except something went wrong on that mission, and Reece aims to find out what. ​

Chris Pratt is primarily known for being a comedic actor with the sitcom Parks and Recreation and the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise to his credit, but he can also show a more serious side to him with Moneyball, The Tomorrow War, and the Jurassic World franchise under his belt. He has even been in a war film before as well — Zero Dark Thirty — which prepared him for the role he plays in The Terminal List. He plays a Navy Seal in both projects. They are very similar, with this series being a more extensive look at men who fought in the Middle East and the cost it pays once you return from the war on terrorism. His career has come a long way.

Pratt shows in this series how dedicated he is to it. After all, he's an executive producer on it. The series shows the ins and outs of the war on terror with a twist, which makes this series so good. The various places it goes were surprising to me yet still very rewarding. The gunplay and action sequences were first-rate and completely sucked me into the series. I felt like I was along for the ride with this man on his mission of revenge. The writer and directors of the series show their dedication to the material with the level of authenticity they go to show the world and everything it entails. This show is a great example of what you can do when you put a lot of thought and effort into every aspect of it.

​The Terminal List streams on Prime Video beginning July 1.

Rating: 4.5/5