Amazon Prime Video’s James Patterson reboot misses the mark

James Patterson’s tough-talking forensic psychologist, Alex Cross, has been portrayed on the big screen by Morgan Freeman and Tyler Perry. Ben Watkins’ adaptation, Cross (Amazon Prime Video), cuts him down for TV and walks an uneasy line between pulp escapism and social commentary.

Hard-boiled crime is awash with world-weary cops who refuse to follow the rules while struggling to cover up the cracks in their personal lives. But Cross is the rare black scout with his own franchise. This fact has not gone unnoticed by Amazon, which is trying to shoehorn a story about racial tensions in the police into a plot about a Hannibal Lecter-style serial killer.

The best thing about the adaptation is Aldis Hodge’s gruff but vulnerable Cross – a forensics detective putting his life back together after the shooting of his wife (Chauntee Schuler Irving). He believes that his work makes him one of the good guys – a view that his black friends and neighbors do not share, as we see in a tumultuous dinner scene where he is accused of participating in the oppression of his people.

Washington DC is celebrated in the series as a focal point of African-American culture, and Cross is reminded that this vibrant community views him as an outsider as he and his detective partner John Sampson (Isaiah Mustafa) investigate the death of a former drug addict. . The man went clean after discovering religion. Now he has been found with his system overloaded with drugs. Cross suspects that evil is afoot.