Based on a novel by retired Navy SEAL Jack Carr, "The Terminal List," which premiered Friday on Prime Video, stars Chris Pratt — in grim-visaged, square-jawed, gravel-voiced mode — as Navy SEAL commander James Reece, a man with a mission and the guns to carry it out. (This is Pratt's second SEAL, after Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty.") You will not get a hint of Andy Dwyer, the lovable lunkhead Pratt played on "Parks and Recreation" (apart from a little guitar playing) or even "Guardians of the Galaxy" hero Peter Quill. This is a revenge thriller in which the dramatic points, other than the celebration of military fellowship, are those of a shooting gallery.
Reece, a supersoldier who can also rock a sewing machine, is the only survivor of a covert operation in the Middle East gone wrong. He returns home to California — and wife Lauren (Riley Keough) and daughter Lucy (Arlo Mertz) — with headaches, confused memories and a tendency to see people who aren't there. Still, he has suspicions that there was something fishy about the ambush that wiped out his unit, and about evidence that does not align with his admittedly dodgy recollection. He is also pretty sure that someone is out to kill him and finish the job, whatever the job is.
It turns out that, yes, people are trying to kill him, or there wouldn't be much of a story. And that, yes, there was something suspicious about that operation. Conspiracy goes where conspiracies usually go, Corrupt Powerful Interests bent on self-protection. There isn't much to say in detail that doesn't constitute a spoiler, but Carr and his adapters enlist an unusually wide array of players to share the blame. Reece, who has additional reasons to be angry I won't enumerate — but which are common to the genre — becomes a ghost, both to kill anyone who might be coming for him, and everyone he deems responsible for his situation. (Like the Lord High Executioner in "The Mikado," he's got a little list. An actual list.)
