Anton Shmerkin

Absolutely unwatchable. Pure kaka. I gathered whatever strength I had to endure this until Thurman and Theron, the two formerly beloved 50-year-olds, finally got it on. Alas, what I had in me wasn’t enough. I’m a mere mortal after all.

Between Malek’s trademark creepiness (this time with a sadistic fleur) and a cretinous plot, this thing is a complete waste of time. It does strive to entertain, but I just couldn’t plow through the film’s utter absurdity, even by Bond standards.

This series is genuinely unwatchable, suffering from a fundamental flaw similar to the culinary blunder of combining every imaginable exotic ingredient into a single dish. Even when prepared by a Michelin-star chef at an upscale restaurant, randomly mixing the finest and most luxurious elements results not in a gourmet masterpiece but in a confusing, inedible mess. Likewise, the series throws together an excessive and disjointed collection of scenes, characters, and concepts without coherence or purpose. At its core, the series lacks a compelling story. Instead, it delivers an awkward blend of hypochondria and a clumsy diary of failures, desperately trying to appear humorous and engaging but ultimately creating something utterly unrelatable. The frequent attempts to expose the inner workings of Hollywood further compound this issue. Rather than drawing viewers into an intriguing behind-the-scenes experience, it ironically highlights the tediousness of watching how the sausage is made. With rare exceptions - moments of genuine dialogue, meaningful exchanges of thought - most portrayals of any "industry kitchen," whether military, television, or Hollywood, inevitably devolve into soap operas of varying quality. Beyond its restless verbosity, the series offers viewers little of real value. It mistakenly equates frenetic activity and constant chatter with depth and substance. Just as novice salespeople often mistake verbosity, exaggerated gestures, running around, shouting, and hysteria for effective selling, lay audiences might initially perceive such dramatics as entertaining. However, seasoned professionals in the art of storytelling, much like experts in sales, recognize that true effectiveness lies not in excessive words or frenetic gestures, but in clarity, authenticity, and meaningful connection - qualities this series significantly lacks.

“The Courier” takes a fascinating slice of Cold War history - the tense relationship between the U.S., U.K., and Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis - and distills it into a formulaic Hollywood spy would-be-thriller. Instead of embracing the era’s complexities, the film leans on well-worn clichés: the noble Soviet informant willing to sacrifice everything, the ruthless KGB operatives, and the bleak, almost caricatured depiction of life under the Soviet yoke. While the historical material is rich, the execution feels disappointingly predictable.

Like any of you out there, I bought into this thing because of a) Collin Farrell and b) the highly misleading trailer (basically, it contains 90% of the 8-episode series' entire violence reel), expecting a "Ray Donovan"-like beautiful mess. Should've stopped watching as soon as Farrell caught a fly with sushi sticks, but that's on me. "Resident Alien was funny and twisty. Travelers had drugs and shootouts. Do we need another "do-no-harm-alien-observer" show, but this time styled around Hollywood noir detectives (to the ridiculous extent of money-not-the-issue Farrel bucking for "Blues Brother" and driving a Corvette Stingray)? Well, we'll see what he drives in Season 2.

The film is severely under-written; it feels like a sliver of a fragment of an episode in a series. There are some blatant fabrications designed purely to "shock and awe" that bothered me, like photojournalists who shoot on film for some reason, on their own accord, embed themselves with an active combat unit during an actual close-quarter shootout?! Still, with the way one-percenters are grabbing wealth in America, the country is way overdue for a civil war. Ironically, it's the British director who saw it.

A much creepier and less fun 'Friends?' Despite all the tear-jerking dialogue, there's zero chemistry between characters, and by the end of Ep. 3, when the thrill is largely gone, the show begins to resemble the rest of the 'Baddie-aliens vs. goodie-earthlings' heap whose name truly is Legion.

If you skip over wokeness, girl power, unnecessary mysticism, parallel stories and Alaska's day-to-day, and aren't too fussy about the ridiculous finale, you can easily cram all 6 episodes into a 1/2-hour session of relatively good TV.

Loved it, loved the nasty cliffhanger they left it on, can't wait for Season 2. Weird that so much hate is going on, the series is great for everyone - plenty of action, smart sequencing, several storylines but they all have their audiences and all are very necessary to the plot - something I don't see often even in some 8-star rated shows on IMDB. I binged "The Recruit" over the weekend, and I must say, you're in for a treat. If I had to complain, I'd say that some casting choices were not to my liking; there are plenty of beauty and brains on screen but when it comes to toughness and sheer scull-breaking muscle mass, the stringy female action heroines are not very convincing. But I've been lamenting this since "Colombiana," so I've gotten used to it by now...

A bit of an insult to the material. E.M. Remark didn't write his book so some poser could flex his imagination. Rename the characters - and I could never guess that the film is based on the literary masterpiece I spent nights reading under blankets...