Credit: Netflix

Do you remember when Hollywood seemed to have absolutely no clue what to do with Alan Ritchson? The man had the build, obviously, so those roles kept coming his way, which is how he ended up as Aquaman in Smallville, Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Hawk in Titans.

But then you go back to Blue Mountain State and watch him as Thad Castle, and something clicks. You realise there is way more going on here than just muscles and brooding. He is funny, properly funny, and you start thinking maybe the problem was never Ritchson. Maybe everyone was just so used to watching him play the hunk, they needed a change of perspective.

Then Reacher came along and, job well done. It lets him be intimidating, obviously, because come on, you are not casting that man to play a timid accountant, but it also gives him room to be dry. There is actual personality in there, who knew!

So if Jack Reacher is basically your entire Alan Ritchson reference point, fair enough, but you are missing a few good watches, and these five Netflix films are worth having a gander at.

Five Alan Ritchson movies to watch right now

War Machine (Patrick Hughes, 2026)

If Reacher showed what Ritchson can do when you use the potential right, War Machine seems to have gone one step further and thought of putting him through more punishment. He plays 81, a combat engineer trying to earn his place in the US Army Rangers, when a training exercise goes completely south. What starts as a brutal final test turns into a fight against an otherworldly killing machine, and at that point, passing selection is the least of his worries.

And Ritchson went through the wringer making it too. A lot of the action was shot for real in Australia and New Zealand, and he said during production that he’d never been more knackered in his life. You can tell, because this isn’t Reacher; 81 gets battered and spends half the film making it up as he goes along, which actually suits him.

Ordinary Angels (Jon Gunn, 2024)

Now take away all the stuff Ritchson usually gets to rely on, and things get a lot more interesting. In Ordinary Angels, he plays Ed Schmitt, a widowed dad whose daughter needs a liver transplant. And there is no man to punch here or a door to kick in, as he is simply a grieving father drowning in medical bills. But then Hilary Swank’s Sharon Stevens barrels into his life and decides she is helping whether he likes it or not.

However, the craziest part is that the story actually happened. The film is based on the 1994 Louisville ‘Snow Baby’ story, when a whole community pulled together during a huge winter storm to get Michelle Schmitt to a transplant. Ritchson doesn’t overcook it either; he keeps Ed pretty contained, which makes sense because this is a man who has gone past angry and is exhausted. He doesn’t know what to do with people being kind to him, and you can see him trying not to completely lose it.

Nora Roberts’ Midnight Bayou (Ralph Hemecker, 2009)

Now we scoot a little more into the past to 2009, and you get a version of Alan Ritchson that feels like he belongs to a completely different career. Nora Roberts’ Midnight Bayou was one of Lifetime’s Roberts adaptations, and no, Ritchson isn’t the man front and centre on the poster. Jerry O’Connell gets that gig of playing Declan Fitzpatrick, a lawyer who buys a supposedly haunted house near New Orleans and then learns, rather inconveniently, that the past isn’t finished with the place.

Ritchson plays Lucian Manet, who is tied to that history, so he is not driving the modern-day story; he is part of the mystery. And watching it now is quite funny, because there is none of the usual wink-wink stuff about how massive he is, and no big scrap awaiting around the corner. He just has to fit into this old-school supernatural melodrama and play it straight. So if you have only ever known him as Reacher, this one is very much a surprise.

Ghosts of War (Eric Bress, 2020)

Ghosts of War is sort of the next logical step if you think about it. He has the same spooky business, only now he has a rifle. Eric Bress, who wrote and directed The Butterfly Effect, drops five American soldiers into a French château near the end of the Second World War. Their job is simple enough: take over the place from another unit and guard it. Sounds easy, right? Except that the soldiers they are replacing cannot get out of there fast enough, which is never a great sign, is it?

Ritchson plays Butchie, one of the men in Brenton Thwaites’ squad, and at first, he is the sort of solid presence you’d expect. Then the film starts pulling the rug out from under everyone, and things get very strange, very quickly. There is even a point where Butchie starts insisting that none of what they are seeing is real. And kudos to the location because the château itself helps enormously, as it played a massive role in the background.

Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland (Lev L Spiro, 2016)

If Reacher is your main Alan Ritchson reference point, The Rise of Thadland is going to feel like someone swapped him out while you weren’t looking. The titular Thad Castle has been drafted into the NFL, and Alex Moran needs his help saving Blue Mountain State’s Goat House, to which he agrees, but only if they build an enormous party kingdom in his honour; thus, Thadland.

The best bit is Ritchson wasn’t just dragged back in to do the old routine. He co-wrote the film and produced it after fans helped bring the cancelled series back through Kickstarter. The campaign raised more than $1.9million from nearly 24,000 backers, which tells you people were not over Thad Castle, and you can sort of see why.