Reviews

I rated this 2/10 based on full 2 seasons. But really, first 3-4 episodes of first season would be more like a 6/10, after which all the rest fall to 1/10. To rate this fairly, I rewatched the movie, right after finishing binge watching both seasons. Movie is epic level, show sucks beyond initial few episodes.

For those who did not know, this show is just a remake of film starring Robert Redford called "Three Days of Condor" from 1975. Film is really solid with quick enough pacing, and simply follows ONE character, who is not a genius, or anything really above average, just a nerdy CIA bookworm type, ie. not field operative, not a killer, not a super spy, just sort of guy who likes to read ton of books and deals with cryptography.

The series instead chooses to split its focus over dozens of characters, and it falls apart right from the start because most of those characters are simply irrelevant to the story. If you pick up James Bond film, you are probably watching it to see scenes with James Bond, and not to watch family scenes in personal life of a Janitor who happens to clean James Bond's office five days per week. If someone gets killed, we do not need to watch 20 minutes about their wife crying, their children asking about daddy, ... COME ON!

If series mentions, repeatedly, through multiple characters, that main character is some kind of genius, prodigy, mastermind, then writing of his character should reflect that. It does not. What they did is steal all good lines from movie for initial couple episodes, ... then there was nothing left. From that point on you got 'genius' who behaves like a child unable to control his emotions, willing to place all of his friends and family in danger, but lacking nerve to pull the trigger when required. Just lame if you put him side by side with Redford's version. Anyway, this show never needed to get made, its right up there with other bad remakes we got over past two years.

Basically, this film is about as accurate as main character could pass for what Max actually looked like.

Its like they were going for Arnold Schwarzenegger Austrian type, ... Max Schmeling simply did not look anything like that. If you are going to make a film where central focus is story of one man, least you can try to do is to have main character act, speak, walk, talk, look like actual person in question did. They utterly failed to do that here.

Second rather serious issue is that while now movie stars are treated as high society, in 1930's Germany, movie stars were seen as very low class, alongside all actors, entertainers, beggars (they were actually all called beggars because show itself would usually be free, and then after they would pass around a bucket, begging for donations). In this movie, Max's future wife, Anny Ondra, is treated like she is Marilyn Monroe. That is very far removed from what her life was in reality. Her association with Max is what actually gave her career and popularity a HUGE boost.

Film also nearly entirely avoids things like Max refusing to join Nazi Party, Max having mostly non-Germans and Jews as friends, ... he was unique sort of individual, type who probably would not have survived those times in Germany were he not seen as "SuperMan", and promoted as friend of Hitler and other higher ups of Nazi Party by media.

Really, if you are going to choose to make a historical film, about individual who should be portrayed accurately, it is really inexcusable. And film should have included far more clear explanation of how Max went from literally losing everything when war ended, to quickly making back MILLIONS inside of mere TWO YEARS, buying Coca Cola Franchise with that money and salvaging and rebuilding his image from false portrayal of him as a 'Nazi" to one closer to the truth. Man deserves better than this sad excuse for a film.

I would normally give something this weak a 1/10. It gets a 3 because it did have couple funny scenes in it and it was not a total waste of my time.

Problem is, it is great concept executed really badly. Acting is on par with maybe high school drama class. Actors deliver their lines extremely stiff. It was actually worse than soap operas.

Concept of restaurant owner making a deal with creature that is a cross between a vampire and something from H.P. Lovecraft books is awesome. And this could have been really solid film. But it is like someone wrote a skeletal script on a napkin, and then filled it up to extend the story with nothing but really, really bad filler scenes.

Ending felt forced. Not preplanned, and well thought out, but like someone simply decided "ok, I wrote enough, time to end this thing" and came up with one of dumbest endings for a movie of this type I have ever seen. And I see a LOT of films.

I understand that this was likely very low budget attempt and probably people involved had fun making it, and if this was one of those free straight-to-YouTube films it would be ok. But as a demonstration of anyones skill at film making, it utterly fails.

I wanted to like this film more. I really did.

I have not read the book, but I looked it up and it is fairly old book now, from 80's. Had I read that book in 90's maybe I would have found it interesting. But today?

We have artificial insemination, and plenty of willing surrogates, you can become a foster parent, or adopt a child even if you are relatively poor, and quite frankly there are so many unwanted kids stuck in grouphomes, fosterhomes, and similar places who would be more than happy to be placed with someone who would care for them and love them.

Concept of religious Christians gaining control in USA today is just not plausible. Far more likely scenario is that men are discriminated against and mass executed, just like in literally every single historical occurrence I can think of that can be compared to this boring TV series.

I think far bigger problem is that even my female feminist friends who more often than not I have to agree to disagree with actually agree that this deserves a 1, although their reason is that it is so boring they just cannot force themselves to watch it. So who exactly is target demographic for this? I noticed that real reviews from people who should like this topic tend to be 4-5/10 and only bots and fakes are giving it a 10.

It does have decently high production values and I doubt it was cheap to make, but this was a bad mistake. It should have been updated to resonate much better with modern audiences, and rewritten so it has lot of interesting scenes, maybe more action, ... less pointless.

Also, I only know main actress from Mad Men, and I found her passable in that role, but in this, she ... well, she really cant act. She has just couple facial expressions she rotates through. Not that I can blame show being so boring just on her, but its not helping things.

I gave it a 1 for same reason I'd give any badly designed political propaganda a 1. It is not entertaining. It is boring. It fails to achieve any intended purpose, unless that purpose was to bore us all. For comparison, American Sniper was utter nonsense and entirely just propaganda material, but at least parts of it were entertaining. This, after watching two full seasons, I cannot come up with single redeeming quality.

Acting is below B-grade, story is much weaker version of recycled ideas.

If you want very similar story told better watch Parts: The Clonus Horror or its remake The Island.