New on Amazon: Forget Reacher, this detective thriller will become your new obsession!

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Alex Cross is a loving but desperate family man after his wife’s murder. He has only one obsession: finding killers.

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If you didn’t know his name, you will with Cross: actor Aldis Hodge (Hawkman in Black Adam) is the star of this new Prime Video production. He stars with Isaiah Mustafa (Shadowhunters) as his future partner, as well as Ryan Eggold, who plays a wealthy patron who hides many secrets…

Return of the hero

Fans of the American thriller definitely know his name: Alex Cross. A paper hero introduced by James Patterson in 1992, this cop with a degree in psychology has already been played on screen by Morgan Freeman in the duology The Collector and The Mask of the Spider.

In each of these two films, Cross follows a serial killer who he must profile before catching him.

This time, the adventure of a Washington policeman returns in the form of a series. Exit Freeman (and Tyler Perry in the much-forgotten 2012 film), it’s the (very) muscular Aldis Hodge who slips into the raincoat of this hero who has a lot of personal problems to deal with.

The Prime Video version casts him as an inspector who mysteriously loses his wife and finds himself haunted by ghosts from his past. The first season of the series, which does not adapt a specific book but reinvents the story, sees it follow Fanboy, a serial killer inspired by America’s greatest criminals.

His interpreter Ryan Eggold, seen in New Amsterdam and The Blacklist, is particularly disturbing in this role of a dandy with playful fantasies. Cross’s investigation and his appetite for psychology allows the audience to learn a little more about this antagonist who reveals himself from the start.

The idea is not to know who the killer is, but why he does what he does.

Series for fans of the genre

Cross shouldn’t be compared to Reacher, another big platformer, because the only thing the two have in common is that they have a character who suffers from a hero complex. Do not expect an action sequence, but more psychology and suspense.

We can criticize Cross for its form, which lacks modernity, and for its substance, which still remains classic. The series is more like what we see on American television than a platform production.

But where this adaptation tries to stand out is in its way of evoking American news and movement Black lives matter. It shows very well the mistrust of the African-American population towards the police and how the latter deals with it. And in any case he found a necessary ally in Cross.

Cross, 8 episodes to watch on Prime Video.