john c – Google

Mads Dittmann Mikkelsen is a wonderful, complex, nuanced, and accomplished actor. This makes his choice of acting in this witless drivel of a 'film' so perplexing. Does he need money? Or perhaps a new agent? The overwrought 5 star google reviews are literally inexplicable - although the 18% Rotten Tomatoes is spot-on. It fails as a dark comedy. It fails as a John Wick redux (a film series problematic in its own right). It fails with its tiresome expository dialogue. It fails with its utterly predictable plot and Reveal! Surprise! ending. It fails as a Kill Bill rip off. It falls with its tedious set-up for Polar II. I'm giving it 2 stars rather than just one because the classroom scene is genuinely...bemusing. This movie can best be described as a juvenile's fantasy of gore and vulgarity and sex better performed as an animated cartoon. Please Mads, no Polar II for the sake of your artistic integrity.

This is one of those maddening series (see, "Kingstown") where a few successful scenes or a compelling episode induce you to watch more - only to be rewarded with lazy, cliche-ridden, implausible writing and mailed-in performances. Rinse, repeat. (The most oft-used device in such a series is: at one moment the cops/military authorities are super smart, and in the next, in order to advance the plot without the writers having to do some heavy lifting, the same authorities become super-dumb.) The actual plot line itself is an America-first fever dream with a mid-series throwaway 'history' lesson just to show us the writers are hip to the "real world", or some stereotype of it. You can literally visualize the conversation in the production office: "Hey, maybe we should cover our...". The cast is essentially Luke Evans - he literally holds this series together for what it's worth. Of the other leads, Jessie Collins offers up a Method smorgasbord that comes dangerously close to parody. Or maybe it is? Michael Huisman is a 2 dimensional cut out that has me thinking if he can get a gig with this lifeless performance, maybe i should give this industry a shot. I'm giving 2 stars not the 1 it actually deserves because they got me to watch it to the end, so there is that.

I literally cannot believe the credence Netflix has given this 'documentary' - frankly, more of a mockumentary in the Spinal Tap vein. It is reckless, irresponsible - and gives far too much time to grandiose, self-satisfied, and self-indulgent conspiracists masquerading as 'researchers' and 'journalists'. This show makes the Harry and Meghan doc seem like cutting edge journalism in comparison. But wait, a woman in a Florida tract-home has cracked the case wide-open but no one will listen! That's because they are listening to an "aviation journalist" with a crackpot theory (or 2) and a book to sell. And the one supposedly real investigative journalist - from Le Monde no less - thinks that by simply repeating her opinions and conjecture - while dismissing actual proof - well, that's proof enough. Her super-secret source (recreated as an underground parking garage meet-up straight out some B novel) claims it's The Americans! I mean the French always blame the Americans, don't they? Because, AWACS! The acronym alone suggest nefarious involvement, doesn't it? Oh yes she is selling a book too. Seriously, they should let the adults get on with the hard work of solving this. As for the families of the victims - their anguish is understandable but in an age of Google and social media where an answer to 'everything' is but a click away - sadly, sometimes it isn't.

I was looking forward to this film. It was ok - but a bit stiff and frankly, treated the main characters a bit superficially. You get no real sense of the challenges Jesse faced and the sacrifices he made to reach the position he held - aside from some throwaway set-piece scenes of racism and one strong scene where his personal self-doubt is shown. In this context, the film was also easily 20 minutes too long - the length added volume but little depth. It's not really a genre 'war' movie. Lastly, others have already commented on the technical inaccuracies of the aircraft / naval aviation as portrayed.

Journeyed through 5 reasonably tolerable episodes to arrive at the episode 6 BIG REVEAL - a literally laugh out loud pretentious, infantile, double-psyche super-fake "ooohhhh aren't we clever" (hint, not) bit of gibberish that will definitely leave the 12 year-olds in your home awestruck. Seriously, don't waste your time. Note to all TV execs everywhere whose job it is to 'greenlight' projects - find whomever the writers were for Breaking Bad, or The Sopranos, or Madmen or Gomorrah, etc etc (you know, real writers) and pay them whatever sum of money they want. Heck, even the head of craft services on any of those shows could write/direct better than this. This show even makes cliche-loving, acronym-riddled Joe Mercurio's writing look brilliant by comparison.