Katherine Jones

Generous 2 stars. Casting, acting, editing, writing left much to be desired. It has one of those overly drawn out military/conspiracy plots that is so needlessly complex it doesn't even make sense in its own universe. How did the baddies get so many employees on their side? Why were these decisions made? It seems like they were made by working backwards from the outcome to achieve a 'plot', not logical decisions that would have been made at the time. I don't want to also pick on Hong Chau because she was amazing in The Whale and The Menu, and Gabriel Basso was great in Hillbilly Elegy. I think the poor acting here probably comes from casting people in roles that don't fit them, and writing/directing them poorly. There were a couple of terrible wigs including Chau's (at least not as bad as Serkis' Luther wig). I agree with another commenter about the assassin villains. The man seems to be 'all business killer' and the woman's personality seems to be... 'unstable, confused sociopath'. She clearly has an American accent and flip flops between wanting a 'normal' life, where he is foreigner. Their shared(?) nationality seems to be completely unrelated to the plot, no revenge or anything interesting, just two assassins that seem to be in a relationship because two separate characters were written that were both assassins. Like the two mains, they had 0 chemistry and I didn't care about their screentime (of which way too much was given). When they showed up for the 10th scene of 'heroes go somewhere, assassins are waiting in the car to strike' I fell asleep. Also they keep killing everyone surrounding the mains, but the mains always fail to warn the next person that they should flee until the situation is resolved. This lead to many deaths that made me upset while rolling my eyes. The addition of the VP's daughter plot only served to drag the show out longer than it needed. DB Woodside was alright here as another actor I recognized that has been in better roles, but he seemed to have a pillow under his shirt? I honestly don't know if he gained weight, and that's all fine if he did, but there are a couple of scenes where he's sitting and it looks like a terribly cheap prosthetic. On the positive side, I LOVED that Luciane Buchanan's character actually helped out during fights despite being untrained in combat. Most of the time the 'girl/civvie' will maybe (maybe!) attempt to do something unsuccessful but be thrown aside and the 'manly man' will have to complete the fight alone (or the girl WITH training will somehow take out a 7 foot tall male assassin all on their own). Here, she comes back into the fight multiple times despite being weaker and untrained, and actually manages to save everybody on a couple of occasions by using what she has to its full potential (putting her full weight and then some into swinging objects at distracted attackers, making people lose their balance etc). A trained killer is not someone you want to fight one on one, but when you and your trained partner are in a life or death situation, it's still 2 on 1, and anything the civvie can provide may decide the outcome. I'd like to see more of this from civvies in these types of shows. Overall skippable. Watch The Bodyguard for a more interesting/intense show that seems to have had several elements lifted by this one, or The Recruit for a much more fun show with interesting characters. There are also some actors here that I'd love to see again in something that fits them better.