Forget Jack Reacher—Netflix’s bold new thriller hero is here (and it’s not The Night Agent or Harry Hole)

In a pop culture that's full of special agents like The Night Agent and Reacher, ex-military turned vigilantes, and angsty police officers, Netflix's The Wages of Fear brings to the table an entirely different type of hero. More than just a retrograde rehash, this 2024 French-language remake of the 1953 original by Henri-Georges Clouzot is a significant landmark; its coming means more than a remake—more of a subtle, considerate move away from the well-known thriller model established by characters such as Jack Reacher, Peter Sutherland, or Harry Hole.

The hero of The Wages of Fear is not exposing political conspiracies or meting out vigilante justice. He is not a cop in a badge, acting on behalf of a secret government directive, or exposing multi-strata conspiracies with state-level implications. He is Fred, as played by Franck Gastambide—a regular bloke motivated by economic desperation, not out of patriotic imperative or moral indignation. And that makes an important difference in positioning this film within the new thriller genre that once centered around heroes like Reacher.

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A tale of survival, not of justice

The Wages of Fear is not part of an anthology but a standalone original, and it does hold fast to its initial conception. The movie is the tale of a crew of tight-knit men employed to transport unstable nitroglycerin along treacherous terrain in a bid to put out an oil well fire. The job is as simple as it is deadly: take a single misstep and everything—literally—blows up. Unlike thrillers that feature highly trained protagonists like Reacher, this film strips the genre down to its rawest, most fragile form—human survival.

Fred, our protagonist, is neither a genius nor a combat-tested veteran. He’s a smart-mouthed, rough-around-the-edges guy who is conscripted for a suicide mission because he has nothing left to lose. That makes him fundamentally unlike Reacher or Sutherland, who seem to dominate their worlds with just a tilt of the head. Fred responds. Fred improvises. Fred doesn't want to die. That passive survival—instead of active heroism—is what creates tension here.

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A story of exploitation and desperation

Class, labor, and expendability themes thrum just below the surface of The Wages of Fear. In contrast to Reacher, where the hero's existence is of utmost significance to national or international politics, Fred's survival matters only to him and to those people he's attached to. No gangster awaits at the gate, no prize or moral triumph. He's being exploited—his life a fair gamble in the effort to introduce corporate power into the picture.

All of this is within a greater critique built into the DNA of the film. The laborers who are employed are chosen precisely because they are subpar. They are not part of systems of privilege, protection, or justice. What this does is it makes the stakes horribly tangible. Where the majority of thrillers arm their protagonists to fight systems inside, The Wages of Fear presents us with a system that has already cast aside its characters long before the story starts.

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Psychological tension over action set pieces

Viewers who are searching for car chases, gunfights, or the simplistic rhythms of action films will find The Wages of Fear strangely disappointing, and Reacher thrives in that aspect. It's deliberate. The pace of the film is deliberate, interspersed with long stretches of silence punctuated by violent eruptions of savagery. The main antagonist is not an organization or a villain—it's the road. Any jolt, turn, or mechanical breakdown could be instantaneous death.

This generates a different kind of suspense—one that builds not through external tension. The characters aren't navigating through land—they're coping with fear, questioning decisions, and confronting mortality in the moment. It's existential tension, not action-driven build, that propels things forward.

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A non-traditional hero in a non-U.S.-centric thriller

Franck Gastambide plays Fred, who is not like the slick, invulnerable heroes that pack Anglo-American cinema. Unlike Reacher, he's weary, racked, and clearly frightened. And he keeps going—because he has no other option. The gritty grounding of his character makes him more plausible and less like the hyper-stylized heroes of hits like The Night Agent, whose high-speed tension frequently centers on government-grade assets and geo-political consequences.

Additionally, the European country of origin and French-language release of the film place it outside U.S.-oriented ideologies typical of thrillers. No nationalism, no conspiratorial patriotic motive. The danger is personal. The incentive is financial. The mood lacks triumphalism. That universality—focusing not on a nation, but on the individual—is one of the hallmarks of The Wages of Fear and in part why it is so universally enjoyed.

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Netflix's deeper strategic pivot

Netflix's embracing of this type of project seems to be part of the platform's moves to challenge genre storytelling beyond traditional horizons. While many of its previous hits, including those comparable to Reacher, relied on recognizable character tropes and action-forward storytelling, this film leans into ambiguity and risk. By investing in a French-language feature that moves at a slow burn and stars an anti-heroic protagonist, the platform is not simply creating space for riskier storytelling—it's testing genre conventions.

The film may not have the commercial oomph of a franchise IP like Reacher, but its spare intensity and rough-around-the-edges worldview is a deliberate editorial decision. This also indicates a predisposition to narratives that speak across cultures. The concept of a man pushed into an untenable position for financial survival is not cultural or linguistic. That way, The Wages of Fear is a thriller without borders—one more concerned with the psychology of peril and survival.

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The Wages of Fear (2024) doesn't have a franchise hero. It doesn't attempt to replace Reacher or compete with genre companions' sweeping webs of espionage or crime epics. What it does is redefine heroism, tension, and storytelling stakes in silence and simplicity. Fred's journey isn't transformation or redemption—it's about staying alive with a job that has the potential to kill him anytime.

In giving up on the template of characters such as Jack Reacher, Peter Sutherland, or Harry Hole, Netflix has subtly left room for a thriller hero to be. And by doing that, it is a reminder that a mission need not always be the case with a hero. Occasionally, the only tale worth hearing is one about someone merely trying to survive to the next mile.

Also read: "I'm smarter": That Reacher line in Season 3 finale totally justifies the way he ends the much awaited duel